


A Soliloquy For Stolen Hearts

by AlexGlass



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: andreil eventually, the slowest of burns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2018-12-15 00:21:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 24,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11794533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexGlass/pseuds/AlexGlass
Summary: Once upon a time the darkness reached out with claws and teeth and ripped a boy to shreds, as it was ought to do. But the boy knew of the darkness and its ways, and when the darkness looked away, the boy struck back, returning every blow. But revenge is no healing, and so two became one, less than the sum of their parts, but more than the nothing that awaits them.He is unique. He is singular. But he is not alone.





	1. ACT I

The bartender is staring at him. Nice face, a bit shorter than Neil, but an aura of confidence that lends him the illusion of height. Combined with long black clothes worn in seeming defiance of the club’s ambient heat produced by hundreds of dancing bodies, he looks untouchable.

Not that Neil has the desire, reason, or time to touch. He has a different purpose tonight.

Said purpose is sitting at the other end of the bar, tucked away with the wall on one side. Excellent tactical move, giving him a full view of the club, but Neil is fairly sure he only chose it because it’s the one seat that doesn’t have people leaning over him to order a drink before heading back to the dance floor. They haven’t made eye contact, but Neil knows that he saw him too. Taking stock of Neil: dark hair, copper eyes, sleeve tattoos indistinguishable in the kaleidoscope lighting. The dance is familiar to both of them, though neither one can lay claim to its creation. They just adopted what humanity made for their own needs.

It’s another twenty minutes and four shots Neil pretends to drink before they finally make eye contact. Another five before the other man slowly leaves his chair and Neil follows. As he does, the bartender catches his eye again. He’s making direct eye contact, subtly shaking his head. Neil thinks he sees him mouthing  _ don’t. _  Interesting. Does he know what’s about to happen?

Neil and the other man weave through the crowd in their own little dance, moving to a different song than the one blaring from the speakers, shaking their bones. The man pushes to the restroom, but Neil pulls back. There’s no crowd around the door to hide their movements; the night is still young, and according to the security tapes Neil stole from the club’s office on Tuesday, it’d be another two hours before people’s bladders started complaining en masse. Neil makes his own pull--a series of subtle glances and, once, an almost-touch--towards the front doors, but the man resists the invitation.

In the end he takes Neil through a service corridor and stopping in front of a thin black door. It has a lock, but he takes a keychain out of his pocket and opens it without thought. Does he work here? That would make sense.

Neil follows him in and closes the door behind him, but there’s not much space to move; it’s a supply closet, the shelving making the space barely big enough for the both of them. But that’s fine. The man smiles. “Hi.”

“Hello,” Neil says, not meeting his gaze. Every time he does this, they’re always put off by his eyes, and he isn’t sure why. Maybe they see something they don’t like. Maybe they don’t see anything. Windows to the soul and all that. Luckily they mostly mistake it for shyness. The man leans in towards Neil, puts a hand on his belt buckle. Smiles again, but it’s hotter this time. Sharper. He’s excited, like a tiger in the second before it closes its jaws around a deer’s neck.

Neil brings his hands to the man’s shoulders, the single light bulb throws harsh light on his tattoos, and the man’s eyes go wide. Neil’s skin is a menagerie of ink. Foxes and ravens and lovebirds and others all vying for space. Their scene is of armies before the clash; feathers puffed out, teeth bared, claws and talons outstretched, every animal primed and waiting to tear into flesh.

Neil grips the back of the other man’s neck, every cell in his body awakens, and the animals

                                                                                                                                                      come

                                                                                                                                                                          fourth

                                                                                                                                                                                              and

                                                                                                                                                                                                                  feast

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      .

 

Neil’s vision starts to blur, and the last thing he sees is the demon shedding his disguise. Trades his smile for a snarl. Teeth elongating, pupils dilating until only the black is left. Sharp pricks at his arms tell him that the demon has claws of his own. It’s been awhile since he met one with claws. The demon growls something, probably an insult, but Neil is too far gone to hear.

* * *

Neil wakes up to someone banging at the door. He quickly checks his watch (it’s been over an hour since the bar) gives himself a quick once over in the tiny mirror above the tiny sink (sleeves a bit torn, hair a mess, skin flushed, which is all par for the course) and then opens the door.

It’s the bartender from earlier. His eyes are searching, and in the fluorescent light there’s a spark, a little bit of fire in the shining sand. “Where’s Jean,” he says.

“Who?”

The bartender gives him a very blatant once-over and says again. “Seriously?”

“Oh!” Neil says. “Ah, he just sorta. Left. A few minutes ago.”

The bartender looks past Neil, into the supply closet. Towards where the man’s--Jean’s--clothes are still on the floor. Underwear included. “So he left...without his clothes?”

Neil just throws his hands in the air in a  _ What can I tell ya _  gesture, but the bartender’s eyes lock onto Neil’s tattoos. “Those look different. Than before.”

And they do. The foxes and mongooses on his left arm are all racing up his bicep, the ravens and lovebirds flying over them, all in a race to get to his right forearm, where the animals are all trying to claw away at a puma with bright eyes. Usually the newcomer would be torn to shreds and disappear within a few hours, but something about the gleam of the puma’s eyes tells Neil he won’t go away easy. Most likely it will change form, probably into a mongoose or raven. Though it’s possible that Neil hit a jackpot, and the puma will make it’s way to where the lion still sleeps under his left shoulder blade. “Must be the lighting.”

The bartender doesn’t look away from the ink. He’s suspicious, Neil can tell. “Yeah. Must be.”

Neil pushes past him, muttering some excuse for leaving. He can feel the bartender’s eyes following him down the hallway and through the door back to the now much denser dance floor.

* * *

 

The hotel is hardly the nicest Neil’s ever been in, but it isn’t the most run down either. A perfect picture of mediocrity. They made Neil show an ID, which was annoying, but it had been a shit month and it’s not like he’d be staying for more than a few days anyway. He deserves a clean bed and some good TV. Plus, the series finale of  _ Foxhole  _ is tonight and he is  _ not  _ watching it in some internet cafe in Buttfuck, Louisiana next to a bunch of teenage gamers who got kicked out of their houses.

He steps out of the shower and towels himself off before wiping the steam off the mirror. The hair dye is fresh, so it’s holding on for now. His eyes are the same blue as they are every day, and he idly wonders, not for the first time, if they’ll always stay that way, or if the ink will claim his eyes like it did his skin and hair.

There’s something nagging at the back of his head, like he’s forgetting something, so he takes the opportunity to check on the menagerie too. Jean the puma is, surprisingly enough, still a puma, currently clawing his way up Neil’s tricep. The first rule of the menagerie is power, and the second conformity; that Jean here manages to eschew both makes him a luckier find than Neil anticipated. With any luck, tonight could probably sustain Neil for at least three months.

The rest of the menagerie seems to have settled down, to rest or settle whatever grudges they managed to form in the past few hours. The scarring around Neil’s heart is faint now, almost enough to look natural in certain lighting. Thank god. Either they’re getting clever or Neil is losing his touch; it’s been taking him longer and longer to find demons to eat, and the more time he has to waste on eating, the less time he has to figure out how to  _ stop _ .


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the slight changes to the title of the fic and the chapter summary. I changed them because the previous versions implied certain themes that won't actually be explored. Enjoy!

In sleep Neil dreams, and Neil remembers, and Neil does not know which is which. The line between history and fiction is missing, and he doesn’t know what’s a recollection of days past or figments of his imagination unrestricted by conscious thought. At one point, the picture seems clear, and he can swear that he truly wore this tunic and these sandals and held these silver coins, but then he’s using them to pay a zebra for a case of rifles and his confidence dissipates.

He wakes, eventually, the digital clock telling him it’s early morning, and the sun telling him nothing at all behind the curtains. He takes a moment to just lay there in bed and stare around, trying to reorient himself. He needs sleep as much as the next person, but it still leaves him slightly unmoored. The walls are a careful neutral beige with a pattern too small to make out. The blue of the sheets matches the television screen; there are like four remotes, and he couldn’t figure out how to turn it off properly.

When the sun begins to shine from under the curtains, he gets up and goes to the bathroom. There’s an odd creak in his neck, which he suspects is Jean the puma either settling in or finally dying. It takes a bit of wrangling with the makeup mirror, but Neil manages to get a proper look at his back, where, surprisingly enough, he is proven wrong on both counts. Jean is prowling undreneath Neil’s right shoulder blade. The puma looks exhausted, but he’s still in motion, staring suspiciously at the lion. None go near the lion, as though warned off by a threat it was never awake long enough to make.

Neil doesn’t know where the lion came from, but he suspects it’s one of his oldest demons, possibly even his  _ first,  _ if he doesn’t count the one eating away at his heart and mind. Neil doesn’t know how old he is, not really. If Neil doesn’t eat, he deteriorates, and what is gone can’t be brought back. He knows most of what he used to be was lost right at the beginning, when he used the darkness itself to patch up the holes it made in his body. Neil was a thing of nightmares in those days, a monster in the night. In some ways, he still is.

He turns to the shower, slightly squinting against the sun coming in low through the window and heeds into the sho—

The bathroom doesn’t have a window.

He gets out of the shower before he even turns the water on, not that it matters, because he can see the light through the shower curtain too. Neil knows he’s staring at a tile wall, but it looks semi-transparent, opaque but still letting the light through.

And then the light moves.

Not quickly, not even dramatically, but noticeably. Moving slowly leftward, from the corner formed by the wall and the bathtub to the counter, and then the door. Neil turns to follow the light, and finds that it doesn’t actually burn his eyes. He chases the light back into the main room, following its shine through the wall. When it reaches the door outside, he almost runs after it, but then he remembers that we was about to step into the shower and is thus appropriately naked. No mysterious lights are worth getting evicted. 

So he just stands there, following the light with his eyes. Eventually it stops moving through the walls, and settles on twitching sporadically in one certain spot. When ten minutes pass without change, Neil goes back to the bathroom and showers. He can see the light the entire time, but when he looks in the mirror, there’s no shadows in the reflection. 

He steps out of the shower, gets dressed, leaves his room and pauses. The light is slightly to his left, flickering but with consistent intensity, and Neil has to grip the railing so as not to fall to the parking lot a floor below.

A floor below. Fucking hell,  _ a floor below. _ The pieces fit together in Neil’s head faster than he can keep up: unnatural light behaving with a disregard for the laws of physics, moving at ground level at a speed that can be matched on foot or wheels.

It’s a halo. Neil is seeing a halo.

* * *

 

Cars honk left and right as Neil’s bike slips between them at a ridiculous and frankly dangerous speed, but Neil doesn’t care. He’s following that light like it’s a lifeline, and he won’t stop until he reaches it, which gut instinct is telling him will be soon.

This would be Neil’s first time interacting with anything that isn’t a demon or a human.  He’s always known that there was more out there, both from his research and from his instinct, late nights on the road being followed by something just at the edge of his vision, but any attempt at reaching out was left unmet. 

He wonders what he should say. Should he say anything? Neil is going at double the speed limit when he realizes that he’s about to meet a being created solely to destroy every cell in his body. Maybe he should just hang back and observe first. Yes. That’s a good idea.

Then he reaches his destination, a three-story building sprawling across half a block, with glass walls and a neon sign of the front. It’s the club from last night, and the halo’s bearer is inside.

Well, Neil thinks, celestial beings have an equal right to get shitfaced.

There’s a cafe across the street, almost full but with dwindling numbers. Judging by the bloody mary displayed in bold letters on the menu behind the cashier, Neil guesses he’s among the last of the clubgoers from the night before. Neil orders a coffee and a sandwich—grilled cheese with jalapenos,  _ yes please _ —and sits down outside the cafe to wait. He pulls out his phone and checks his email; nothing new, though it isn’t surprising. The halo moves around the building with no rhyme or reason obvious to Neil, and he finishes his food and drink thrice over before he finally gets a good look at the bearer.

It’s the bartender from last night. He’s packing up the folding chairs lining the side of the building, a cigarette in his mouth. The halo frames him like the sun in a solar eclipse, gold light contrasting black clothes and complementing gold hair. His expression is blank, like he has no connection or investment in anything happening around him. He finishes folding up the chairs after ten minutes or so and heads back in.

Neil’s been frozen in his seat since the bartender came out, but now that he’s gone Neil jumps out of the chair like his ass is on fire and crosses the street. He pushes the door open, briefly noticing the “Help wanted” sign taped to the door that wasn’t there last night, and almost collides with a large man who’s about to walk out.

“Whoah,” the other man says. “Watch out.” Neil mumbles an apology, but he’s still tracking the bartender, who’s currently making his way up to the second floor. He still hasn’t noticed Neil. Then the man puts a hand on Neil’s shoulder, and Neil realizes that he was being asked a question. “Sorry, what?”

“I said can I help you? We’re closed until the evening, so if you’re looking for a drink I’m afraid you’ll have to find somewhere else.”

“What? Oh. No.” Neil gestures back at the door. “Sign said you’re hiring?” Inwardly he cringes at his words. This is a monumentally bad idea, if not the worst in all of history then certainly the worst Neil ever had, and there are universities out there that teach courses about the stupid things he used to do.

“Oh you’re here for the job!” The man’s face gets significantly brighter, which is impressive considering it practically had a halo of its own beforehand. He must practise that smile on a lot of drunk patrons, then. “Cool, cool, well, I’m Matt, I’m the shift manager. Here, come with me.”

He takes Neil through a different hallway than the one from last night. This one is big enough to drive a dune buggy through, and passes by a surprisingly large kitchen—for the all-night restaurant on the third floor, Matt explains—and then a series of smaller doors. They enter one of them, which turns out to be a well-sized office. Matt gestures for Neil to sit down and he looks around as Matt rummages around the office. “Sorry, we only put that sign up like an hour ago so I’m not sure where the application form is.”

“Why’d you put it up?” Neil asks, though he thinks he’s starting to get a picture of what’s going on.

“Our last busboy quit in the middle of his shift last night. Didn’t even tell the owner, just went on break and never came back.”

_ Except he’s right here. _ “Then how do you know he quit?”

“He told Andrew.” Neil raises an eyebrow. “The bartender. Blond hair, goldish eyes? Maybe you saw him earlier. Anyway, he said that Jean— that’s the guy you’re replacing— decided to quit and didn’t say why.  _ Aha! _ ” Matt finally finds what he’s looking for: a small packet of papers stapled together. “Just fill this out and give it back in the next couple of days and we’re golden.”

Neil leaves with a small nod and a shy smile, and makes his way out of the building. He doesn’t see Andrew again, but he could see the halo shining through the walls the entire time he was there. He crosses the street to his bike, and before he leaves he takes one last look at the club. The halo blazes bright through floor-to-ceiling windows on the second floor, and right before Neil leaves, he sees Andrew.

Who’s looking directly at him.

And the halo disappears.

* * *

 

The rest of the day is spent filling out what parts of the contract he can, and then figuring out how he’ll fill the rest. He’ll have to get an apartment, which is guaranteed to be a bitch with leasing rates being what they are, and he doesn’t intend to stay for long enough for straight-up buying a place to be worth it, even if he can afford it.

The thought makes him pause. What  _ is _ he doing, exactly? Something stupid, certainly. He’s already made his peace with that. But is it dangerous? Neil’s spent decades (and possibly centuries) researching the supernatural world, but everything he knows still won’t fill up the college-ruled notebook he keeps in his bag. Halos are barely a footnote. Neil may very well be trying to stalk God himself and he wouldn’t know until it’s too late.

Neil’s mind goes around in circles for almost an hour before he gives up, opens his laptop, and starts looking at apartment listings. Better he be burned by heaven then consumed by hell.

Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Chapter.  
>  **Wait, does this mean you're no longer writing The 148?**  
>  No, I'll be writing both, but I'll be alternating between them so as to avoid burnout. Though I can tell you now that with The 148 I usually aim for 5-6k words per chapter, I doubt that any chapter of Soliloquy will breach 3k.  
>  **Well is there any way I can contribute?**  
>  What an excellent question, Rhetorical Device! If you like my stuff, please give kudos, comment, or [donate](ko-fi.com/atwrites)! Seriously, comments are the one surefire way to keep me going. Thank you!


	3. Chapter 3

Neil scrambles to pick up his cell when it rings. “Hey, Renee, thanks for calling back.”

“Anytime, sweetheart,” Renee says. Her voice is muffled through strong wind on her end, and the noise of...an engine? “Though we gotta make this quick, my flight leaves in six.” Yep. Engine. “So what can I do for ya?”

“I need you to get me a bank account that’ll pass a credit check.”

“Why? What are you up to?”

“I’m renting an apartment. For a thing.” He can virtually  _ feel _ the eyebrow she’s raising on the other end of the line. “I found something, and I’m not sure what it is. So I’m sticking around until I figure it out.”

Renee hums in disapproval. “And how much money are you asking me for, here?” When Neil tells her, she says “Seriously? That’s a lot to ask for, Neil. Just how important is this?”

He rolls his eyes. “Renee, I’m asking for some cash so I can pay rent for an average-sized apartment in an average-sized city.  _ You  _ rsvp the Penthouse suite in the Plaza every time you visit New York. Hell, the plane you’re on right now is probably more expensive than what I’m asking for.”

“Sweetheart, I get my salary because the Church trusts me to protect their interests and their secrets. You get yours because they tried and failed to exorcise you like eight times.”

“Nine, actually.”

“Case in point. Now I’m going to ask again, just how important is this?”

Neil sighs. He’d been hoping he could keep this a secret, at least until he figured out what was what. “I’ve found someone.”

“Neil, your love life isn’t a good enough—”

“Someone with a halo.”

That manages to shut Renee up for a moment. “Say that again.”

“There’s someone in this city with a halo. I only met him once, but he definitely knows what he is. Not that I do, mind you. But I intend to find out.” Neither of them speak for a moment, and just when Neil is about to continue, the line goes dead.

Six hours later, he gets an email with his new bank info. “Carte blanche,” it says in the subject line. “We want to know everything _. _ ”

* * *

 

By the end of the day Neil has his apartment, a fourth-story penthouse with a shit view but excellent floor space. It’s way beyond the price range Neil was originally looking at, but with the Vatican throwing money at him like they are, he’s gonna take advantage of every luxury. Though he still thinks telling Renee about his true purpose was a mistake.

The Catholic church has been gunning for his destruction for as long as they’ve known he’s alive. Eventually they clued in that if Hell itself couldn’t actually kill Neil, then they didn’t have much of a chance either. So they let him go, and after a while elected to pretend that he doesn’t  exist, and then some time after that elected to only pretend he doesn’t exist on official record. Renee found him hunting in Florida, and while Neil initially resisted, he had to admit that their offer has been a massive benefit.

The next morning, he goes back to the club and hands Matt the paperwork. He doesn’t blink twice when Neil tells him he can work every night, and with a simple handshake, Neil now works at The Foxhole (which is coincidentally  _ not _ themed after the TV show), with his first shift starting at 4 o’clock today.

“Well, day’s still young,” Matt says as he walks Neil out. “So come back for your shift and we’ll start your training then. Club hours begin at six thirty, and usually doesn’t get busy enough to notice until eight.”

“See you then” Neil replies.

“Oh, you won’t, actually. I’m just the day manager. Allison will be in charge of you tonight, and then you’ll also probably meet Kevin too, good luck with that. But I  _ will _ see you tomorrow.”

They say farewell, and Neil goes back to the apartment, to a lone futon and an empty fridge. He stays for about fifteen minutes before he opens his laptop and remembers that he hasn’t bought a wifi router yet, and then he’s right back out the door.

The next few hours are spent acquiring utilities, cleaning supplies, a tv, and some basic furniture. He probably won’t be around long enough to fully furnish the place, and even if he will, it can wait until later. 

He returns to the club two minutes early for his shift and stands in the doorway, unsure where to go. He and Matt exchanged numbers earlier, but that isn’t going to be much help right now.

“Hey!” A voice says to his right, and he turns to see a young woman walking his way. He doesn’t know her, but he’s pretty sure he saw he a few days ago when he first asked for the job. “Neil, right?”

He paints a bright smile on his face and nods. “Yeah. Sorry, are you Allison?” He’s pretty sure she isn’t, but it’s a more polite question than  _ Who are you? _

“Nah,” she replies. “I’m Katelyn. Allison is up at the Nest. Come on, I’ll take you up.”

They walk out of the club and around the side, where a wide staircase with a black awning hugs the outside wall and leads up the the third floor. The venue, Katelyn explains, is owned by three friends: David Wymack runs the Foxhole downstairs, Kayleigh Day runs the Raven’s Nest upstairs, and Tetsuji Moriyama owns the building. The club and the restaurant are managed separately, but they share both kitchen space and staff, and as a busboy Neil will likely work at both regularly.

As they reach the door to the restaurant, Neil turns to Katelyn. “Sorry for not knowing your name back there. So far I only know Matt and...Andrew? Was it?” He knows it is, but Neil didn’t see the bartender at all today, so he may as well fish for information any way he can. 

Katelyn nods once in affirmation, with a fond smile on her face. “Andrew Minyard. He’s the barman. And also my husband, so don’t you get any ideas.” The last part is accentuated with a pointed fingers and a sly smile, and though Neil laughs along, he isn’t exactly paying attention.

What is Andrew doing married to a mortal? Or is Katelyn not mortal? Is  _ Andrew  _ mortal? Is he even aware of what he is? Surely he must be, after what he did with his halo two days ago.

He dismisses the entire line of questioning as they go in. He’s here for the long haul, there’s no use jumping to conclusions. He has better things to worry about.

For example, the verbal battle royale taking place in front of him.

As a team of five cleaners or so scurries around them, a young couple stands at the center of the dining area screaming their hearts out. Neil can’t follow the argument, but he gathers that it has something to do with staffing schedules.

Their yelling is fortunately interrupted by an unfortunately even louder shrill as Katelyn whistles, successfully getting everyone’s attention. As Neil stands there, wondering if his eardrums have burst, Katelyn raises a hand in greeting. “Brought the newbie.”

“Thank fuck!” The woman who Neil assumes is Allison says, throwing her hands in the air. She looks good, in a burnt-red-and-white shirt and slacks. In her right hand is a tablet, and Neil is mildly concerned it’ll wind up thrown across the room in carelessness as she comes their way in long strides. “Thanks, Katelyn, I’ll take it from here. Hi, I’m Allison.” He shakes her hand, and then she turns back to the man she was arguing with, the warm smile on her face melts off as quickly as it appeared. “If you don’t mind, I need to get Neil his stuff and show him the ropes, and then I’ll send him up. Try not to burn the place down while I’m gone.”

The young man rolls his eyes and rudely dismisses her with a wave of his hand. His own clothes are an inversion of Allison’s, the same shade of red this time paired with black. 

This time, rather than go down the exterior stairs, Allison takes him through a side door to a kitchen too small for a restaurant, into a freight elevator at the back wall, and then down into the kitchen proper on the ground floor. She introduces him to Nicky, their head chef, and then runs him through his duties. He’s no stranger to cleaning (the Vatican is far from a reliable source of income) so all it really took was showing him where the cleaning supplies were (which he already knew, not like he could tell her that), where to wash the dishes he brought in, and where to let them dry. Everything beyond that, he’ll be expected to learn on the job.

As she rummaged through their storage space in pursuit of a uniform for Neil—red and black, he’ll be working in the Nest tonight—Allison imparted Neil with advice. “Do yourself and your sanity a favor: if Kevin tells you to do something, do it. If he tells you literally anything else, feel free to ignore him. He’s Kayleigh’s son and he wants to make her proud, so he feels like he has to micromanage. Occasionally we call him Lemongrab to rile him up.” She shoots a glance his way, like she isn’t sure he got the reference, but smiles in relief when he chuckles. 

“Noted,” he replies. “Don’t do anything  _ unacceptable. _ ”

Allison smiles wide. “Yeah, you’ll do just fine around here.”

* * *

 

Allison wasn’t kidding about Kevin’s abrasiveness. He can sell ice to Eskimos when talking to the guests, but behind staff doors he will chew out everyone for everything. He treats Neil’s lack of experience as some sort of cardinal sin, and that means something coming from Neil.

The restaurant kitchen finally closes at 2 AM, and the restaurant itself not long after. The place has been shedding staff as the night wound down, and by the time they close it’s just Neil, Kevin, and a couple of other cleaners called Seth and Addie. It’s as Neil is wiping down tables that he hears the best news of the night: The other three are all  _ Foxhole _ fans. Apparently most everyone who works here watches it because they find the relation to the club amusing.

Seth, Neil figures out pretty quickly, is a born contrarian. He lives for the argument, but still takes it all seriously enough to get angry at it, which sort of grates on Neil. What’s the point of being a devil’s advocate if you keep burning yourself? Addie, on the other hand, is hands down the funniest person Neil ever met. She’s an aspiring voice actress, and since the conversation began, every time she said something it was with a new accent. Kevin had to (uncharacteristically lightly) admonish her when Neil couldn’t work because he was laughing too hard at her Irish brogue.

They’re all discussing their theories for the next season, and Neil joins the conversation enthusiastically. Not that he’s ever  _ had _ predictions; he prefers to let things surprise him. But the debate is fun, and now Kevin’s no-moderation attitude takes a more endearing light. Personally, Neil is of the mind that the main character will totally bite the dust, and Kevin supports him.

“Have you  _ seen _ how many references to death there were around them this season? They are definitely dying,” Kevin says as he stacks the chairs by the wall. 

Neil points at Kevin. “But god knows they won’t stay dead.”

Kevin points back. “Damn right.”

The rest of the night progresses in a similar fashion, and when they finish cleaning up at around 4 in the morning, Neil can honestly say he’s happy with the work. Even if Kevin is an ass.

They lock up and Seth and Addie go home. Kevin takes Neil down to the office to get him a punch card, then makes a notation of his shift so they can log today’s work in later. Kevin invites Neil for a drink, which he accepts, so they change out into their day clothes and head out to the dance floor.

The place is a kaleidoscope of beautiful mayhem. Bodies and music moving not in tandem but in abstract imitations of one another, creating a new pattern in the space between. Neil hopes to see Andrew at the bar, but he isn’t. There’s another bartender, Roland, who eagerly shakes Neil’s hand. When he inquires Kevin about it with a faux-casual tone, Kevin mentions Andrew wasn’t working today.

“Doctor’s appointment or something, I think Katelyn said. Either way, he didn’t have a shift for tonight.” He downs his shot in one go, then points to Neil. “Don’t expect a friend out of Andrew. Katelyn’s nice, gets along with everyone, but Andrew won’t say two words to you unless he had to. God knows why they’re even together.”

“How long they been working here?” Kevin think for a moment, his forehead creasing, then just shakes his head, looking briefly at his glass. “Don’t remember exactly. A few years now.”

It’s a perfectly innocent answer, but it carries hidden value. The demon inside of Neil eats away at everything tying him to the world: body, mind, connections, all of them erode as the demon Neil’s grasp on the world. Memories become indistinct, paper trails vanish, evidence of his existence washed away like footprints in the sand. It possible, plausible even, that Andrew is experiencing some inverted version of the same thing.

Neil downs his shot, makes some vague comment about being tired, and bids Kevin and Roland farewell for the night. He’d moved his bike to the employee parking lot behind the building earlier, and goes there now. There’s a couple making out against one of the cars, and while Neil tries not to look, he still hurries a little bit to stuff his work clothes in the seat compartment and leave before the couple moves on from kissing, which they obviously intend to do.

Neil pulls away from the parking lot as the car they’re leaning on activates the burglar alarm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Chapter.
> 
> **THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN ANDREW AND KATELYN.**
> 
> Waste no time, do you? Anyways, that's a spoiler.
> 
> **Yes but why is Andrew married to _Katelyn_?**
> 
> I think a better question would be why is _Andrew_ married to Katelyn, no?
> 
> Anyways, likes are great, comments make the world go round, and [donations](https://ko-fi.com/atwrites) fill my empty, empty heart.


	4. Chapter 4

Neil doesn’t see Andrew again until Thursday night. He’s working the club tonight, and he and Addie are mopping the floor when Andrew comes in for his shift. The effect is like two magnets of the same polarity; Andrew’s gaze goes right to him, and Neil’s gaze goes literally anywhere else. He knows it’s too late for that, but a large part of him doesn’t want to let Andrew see his eyes, let him know what he is.

Thank god for Katelyn, who calls up to Andrew from the second floor balcony. He sees her, and a small smile graces his face, like seeing home after a long time away. A shot of jealousy courses through Neil’s veins, thick as a drug; that someone like him could have such comfort, without the universe ripping it away.

Neil’s had it himself, several times. A wife, once upon a time. A husband whose name he no longer remembers. He knows he loved them, lived by them, lived for them until their hair was gray and their skin wine-stained and their bodies cold. There were never children. But they were his.

Neil envies Andrew, that he should not endure such pain, and he lets himself be envious, because better Andrew have something Neil never did than they should find themselves equal in misery.

“Hey Andrew!” Addie yells from behind Neil, and he has to resist every instinct in his body not to look at Andrew for his reaction. In the end, there is none. The smile is already gone, and his familiar look of boredom is back. He doesn’t acknowledge Addie’s greeting, though it doesn’t seem like she expected him to.

Neil continues mopping the floor, and Andrew heads for the office. He’s already wearing the black bartenders’ uniform (the only irregularity in dress code in the building), so Neil assumes he’ll be right back out as soon as clocks in. But the minutes go by, and he still isn’t back. When the umpteenth glance at his watch tells him that Andrew’s been gone for over ten minutes, he takes a gamble and yells up for Katelyn.

“Yeah?” she replies leaning over the balcony.

“Isn’t Andrew supposed to be put here with us?

Her brow furrows. “Yeah, uh…” She trails off as she looks around with a bird’s eye view and realizes she can’t find him either. “Hmm. He probably went out for a smoke break.” A shrug, and then she’s gone again.

A smoke break is plausible, but Neil doesn’t think so. Some gut instinct is telling him to go looking, so that’s what he does, leaving the mop against the wall and Addie alone to finish the floor. He makes it halfway to the office before he hears a pair of footsteps behind him. He turns around to find Andrew there, because who else would it be. “What are you.”

Bold statement, Neil thinks. Also: fuck that. “Neil Josten. I’m the new busboy. I know we met under, uh...odd? Circumstances? But I hope that doesn’t damage your opinion of me.”

Andrew takes a step closer in a manner clearly meant to be intimidating. And to some degree, it is; it’s not halo, but there’s an echo of power around him, like a generator in the first seconds of power-up. “What. Are. You.”

Neil still isn’t impressed. Andrew laid his chips out with that step, and so Neil calls his bluff and bridges the gap between them. Before they couldn’t reach each other; now there’s not enough room for a proper punch. “You tell me.  _ You _ brought me here.”

“So you saw it.”

“Was I not supposed to?”

“Not if you’re human, no.” Neil just shrugs in response. There’s only one conclusion to be drawn here and Andrew landed on it before he even came into the building. But he presses on. “You’re not an angel, that much is obvious.”

Neil raises an eyebrow. “Somebody thinks highly of himself.” Andrew rolls his eyes. “When you manage a simpler way to define all of this bullshit, give me a call,” he replies, and frankly, it’s a good point. “Now what are you? You’re...off. I’ve met demons, and you’re pretty close, but not close enough.”

“I’m…complicated. I’m not an Other One, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m a break from the rules, I suppose.” There’s a pause, now. Andrew obviously wants a better answer than anything Neil is willing to give, and Neil has more questions than he suspects Andrew will ever answer. So he pivots. “And where does Katelyn factor into all this?”

Andrew stiffens, not expecting Neil to go there, at least not so soon. “Katelyn is an angel. Like me.”

Neil knows this trick. Present two facts without clarifying a distinction so the other person will interpret the two as connected. Katelyn is an angel, and Katelyn is like Andrew, but she is not an angel like Andrew. He studies Andrew’s face: expressionless but animate, like he forgot to turn on his emotions this morning.

“Either way,” Neil says finally, “they need us back on the floor. You coming?” He neatly sidesteps Andrew and walks back the way he came. The main room is empty; everyone on cleaning duty (Neil included) is supposed to be upstairs,  When he enters the dance floor, Andrew not five steps behind him, he calls up to Katelyn. “Found him!”

Except she’s no longer there. A “Hey!” turns them both around to see her coming out of the auxiliary hallway. “There you are, about time!” She reaches them and gives Andrew a quick hug. But when she does, she nods her head slightly in Neil’s direction, and Andrew nods. He wouldn’t have noticed it if he wasn’t paying attention.

So he’s been discussed. Katelyn probably knew who he is since she introduced herself almost a week ago. Neil can’t say he’s offended, but this is not an ideal situation. 

“Look,” he says, in a somewhat hushed tone. “Obviously you don’t trust me, and I can’t say I blame you. I don’t exactly trust you, either, though” — he shoots Katelyn a pointed look — “I would like to consider you a friend, to some degree. But for now, can the three of us just agree that we’re all just trying to live our lives, and not do harm to anyone here?”

Katelyn and Andrew look at each other, an entire conversation seeming to be held in total silence, before they nod. Do angels have telepathy? He’ll have to figure that out later. “Good. Now then, I do believe we should get to the Nest before Kevin flays us all alive.”

Andrew snorts. “Please. All bark and no bite, that one. Kayleigh is someone to respect, but her son can fuck off.” They head up through the kitchen elevator together, take Kevin’s yelling in verbal silence but with a healthy dose of eye rolling, and get to work.

Neil is lying to them, and he doesn’t feel very good about it. He doesn’t mean them harm, but he  _ is _ here to report on them to an organization known for overreacting in response to anything that puts their legitimacy in question. Already, he’s mentally dissecting everything he knows and what he can safely give the Church. He’d walk away entirely if he could, but as it is his situation is a textbook example of “thin ice.”

And anyway, he sorta likes it here. It’s calm, quiet, and he’ll take that quiet for as long as it lasts.

* * *

That quiet lasts for another six whole hours.

Neil is trying to navigate a bin full of empty glasses through the crowd ( _ trying _ being the operative word) when he sees her: big hair, smooth skin, sashaying to the music in stark contrast to the semi-rhythmic bouncing around her. She’s more an ideal of beauty than a real person. Demons don’t have anything so noticeable to mark them as halos, but Neil always knows. Always.

She’s also very clearly here to hunt. Her eyes are roving over the dancers, searching for a good meal. Any human will do, but most demons tend to be picky. Neil realizes that he probably won’t be able to catch her eye, not in this uniform, with a bin of dirty dishes under his arm. He pushes past the crowd, beelines to the kitchen to drop off the bin, and then quickly heads for the locker room. He changes into clubbing attire as quickly as he can, and is back on the dance floor less than a minute later.

Just in time to see Katelyn inviting the demon through the auxiliary hallway, just like Neil did a week ago.

Neil knows, objectively, that he shouldn’t get involved. He should change back into his uniform and get back to work before Matt notices and calls him out on it. It’s not like Neil needs to eat again, so soon after Jean the puma, and besides, Katelyn surely knows what she’s doing.

But Neil doesn’t, and the curiosity is bigger than any risk. He waits a moment, and then follows them through the door to the auxiliary hallway. There’s sound coming from around the corner, and Neil tiptoes forward so as not to be heard. He isn’t sure, but it sounds like someone is choking. When a short scream is immediately followed by the sound of someone being slammed against the concrete wall (unmistakable to Neil, after so many years), he rounds the corner quickly, poised to fight.

Instead, he’s confronted with an image that will keep him up for a week to come.

Katelyn is holding the demon by her throat a good foot off the ground. He wouldn’t call Katelyn’s expression  _ malicious _ , but there is no indication that she disagrees with any part of this scenario. Her eyes narrow, and as Neil watches, the demon bu r  n   s    l     i      k       e        p         a          p           e           r          i         n        a       n      i     n    f   e  r no until there’s nothing left but ashes. Katelyn retracts her arm, now grabbing onto nothing but air, and grimaces when she sees the ash covering it, like she accidentally put her hand in a plate of food and not immolated a sentient being.

Of course, then she notices Neil gaping at her and shrieks like a cartoon elephant noticing a mouse. “Good fucking God, Neil, what are you…” She shakes her head, wiping the demon ash on her black slacks. “How much of that did you see?”

“The flashy part,” Neil says, and Ketlyn snorts. “Is that… is that what you and Andrew do to them? Burn them?”

Katelyn gives him a considering look. “Most of the time, yeah. Why, what do you do?” There’s a charge to the question, and her hands are twitching. She’s probably expecting to dislike Neil’s answer.

“I eat them.” When Katelyn gives him an almost comical  _ Wait what? _ look, he says “Well not  _ eat _ eat.” He gestures vaguely at the wall that the demon died against not two minutes before. “I sorta… consume them? I’m assuming you’ve seen what happens when a demon ‘eats’ a person. It’s sorta like that, the principle of the act is the same, but the results are different.” He scratches the back of his head. “Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime. RIght now, I think we should head back before Matt questions where we are.”

Katelyn’s eyes are dissecting him, like she can glean everything he hasn’t told her from a single look. “Yeah. Let's.” She passes by him and turns the corner.

Neil isn’t completely sure what just happened, but he knows that Katelyn’s perception of him just changed drastically, and by his shift in two days, Andrew’s will follow suit. He can only hope it changed for the better.

Right now, he better go write down everything he’d just seen. Renee will want to know about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Chapter.
> 
>  
> 
> **Neil was married? But his one true love is Andrew!**
> 
>  
> 
> Neil is demisexual, and to base off canon likely bi-romantic. He's had ample time to fall in love over the centuries.
> 
>  
> 
> **Fair enough.**
> 
>  
> 
> Great! Now then, y'all know the drill. Kudos are cool, comments are hot, and every time someone [buys me a coffee](https://ko-fi.com/atwrites) we get one step closer to [note to self: insert something the readers want]. Thanks for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

Andrew is an angel. Capital A. Where Neil “consumes” demons, Andrew flat out destroys them. He’s never met other angels. Neil has no idea how old Andrew is, whether he’s met God at any point, or whether he has other powers. That’s what Neil tells Renee over video chat.

“There’s gotta be more, Neil,” she says.

“Give me time and I’ll find more,” he lies by way of response. He likes Renee, and trusts her, but he knows he can’t ask her not to report to her superiors. So he lies.  He keeps Katelyn a secret, of course. He doesn’t even tell her Andrew’s name, just calls him “the subject”. Neil will protect the two of them for as long as he can, no matter what it costs him.

He doesn’t tell her about Katelyn being allergic to parsnips, or how she laughed when a summer shower caught Andrew on the way to work and left him soaked to the bone. He doesn’t tell her about how Andrew smokes a pack a day and yet his breath still smells like raspberries and rum.

It’s become a game between the three of them, almost. A secret for a secret, a story for a story. Neil’s age (unknown but certainly nearing the quadruple digits) for Andrew’s greatest fear (heights). Neil’s tale of being mistaken for an aristocrat and almost beheaded  _ six times _ during the French revolution (“By the end of it I knew half the executioners in Paris!”) in exchange for a photo of Katelyn with her foot slamming into Bruce Lee’s face (“He wiped the floor with me that match, but that kick is forever.”)

Such becomes their routine, as the weeks grow to months: only one day a week do Andrew and Katelyn share a shift with each other, but they almost always share one with Neil. So the two who work will finish their night, change their clothes, and meet the third at the bar, with drinks and secrets and audacious tales waiting.

Immortality has its fun moments, it turns out, when you have a friend to share it with. Which, Neil learns, is all Andrew and Katelyn are. Andrew is gay, and Katelyn got her heart broken ages ago by someone she refuses to name, but they took on the title of marriage to keep questions to a minimum and never really stopped. Explains why their bands look like something cheap an amatuer made. Of course, that amatuer probably died before England colonized America, so they’re likely as valuable as the contents of the aforementioned toolbox.

Another things Neil doesn’t tell Renee: demons come to the Foxhole like flies to rot. At least once a week Neil would pull one into the auxiliary closet, or Andrew or Katelyn would take them around the corner. When he asks them about it, they have no explanation to offer.

“It wasn’t like that before,” Katelyn says. The club has finally closed for the night — or rather, morning. The sun crests over the coffee shop next door, chasing away the sky’s cerulean tint. She and Neil are cleaning tables; Andrew worked upstairs tonight, and already went home. “Actually, it was fine right up until Jean disappeared.”

Neil still refuses to admit that he ate Jean, even though they know he did, and he knows that they know, and they know that he knows that they know. He doesn’t have a good reason for it, it’s just instinct. Jean was someone they knew, even if not necessarily liked, so it feels weird to admit that he devoured their coworker.

Even weirder to admit he’s technically still alive.

The thought makes Neil pause. Jean is still right there, asleep beneath his right shoulder blade. Does he know something?

Unlike the lion, Jean’s slumber has been anything but consistent. On average, one out of every eight demons Neil devours survive long enough or deal enough damage themselves for the natives to accept them. But ever since Jean, every single one of those demons have secured their spot and then immediately clawed their way towards the puma, likely hoping to take their pound of metaphorical flesh. So far, Jean’s eaten every single one who tried. But something is up.

The universe seems to be encouraging him, because right then walks in Riko Moriyama.

* * *

 

Neil had met Tetsuji a couple of times, and the man seemed nice enough, even if Neil’s first impression had been “This guy runs a fight club in the basement.” Apparently Neil wasn’t alone, because there was a betting pool among the employees on what kind of illegal shit he was on to. Said pool is never to be mentioned in front of Kevin, because Tetsuji is his godfather and would protect his honor to death.

Riko, on the other hand, was a different matter. Stories about him ran wild among the staff. In the time that Neil has worked at the club, he’s heard Tetsuji’s nephew described as “The world’s worst playboy,” “A petulant man-child,” “Kevin’s ex,” “The Scrooge McDuck of meninists,” “A major hottie,” and “Not the  _ worst _ lay ever, but definitely the one you’ll regret the most.”

Needless to say, it was quite the picture. Neil vastly preferred it over the real thing.

Riko’s suit is expensive, but rumpled, like he’s been wearing it for a while without a chance to clean himself up. He has a brown envelope under one arm, and with the other holds a metallic travel mug, which he uses to point at Katelyn. “Karen.”

“Rita, good to see you again,” Katelyn replies, in a tone that really means  _ Pick a hell and burn in it. _

“Sure, sure, hey is my uncle here? I just got back from Japan and I need to give him this.” He holds up the brown envelope. Katelyn’s tone had either gone ignored or unnoticed.

“Sorry, he’s not here.”

Riko grimaces like he’d woken up to discover he’d had a one-night stand with Mitch McConnell. “Well then please put this on his desk.” He tosses Katelyn the packet. “Thanks Chloe.”

“No problem, Rambo,” she says as she catches it.

Neil knows what he’s about to do is stupid and probably futile, but he can’t help it. “Her name is Katelyn.” Riko turns to him, seemingly only just noticing he’s there, and gives him a passing once over. He barely has an inch on Neil, but seems to use it to label Neil as both literally and figuratively beneath him. “And who the fuck are you supposed to be.”

Neil has a sudden desire to say Dr. Frank-N-Furter, but better to save that one for later. “Neil.”

Riko squints. “We haven’t met.”

“No. No we haven’t.”

Riko gives him another look, then seems to mentally dismiss him in a manner not unlike Kevin’s. Huh. He turns back to Katelyn. “Anyway, is Jean here today? He hasn’t been returning my calls.”

Neil doesn’t think he’s ever seen a face contort to such a grotesque degree as when Katelyn tells Riko that Jean left, and he’s met Hieronymus Bosch. Drunk. “The fuck do you mean he  _ quit? _ ”

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Neil snaps. He’s too tired and too high-strung for this conversation. “Jean fucked off one day and didn’t come back, and now I’ve got his job.”

Riko looks back at him, and this time takes his time examining Neil. “Yes. You have, haven’t you Nate? Taken right over.” The comment couldn’t be more annoyingly vague, but in that second Neil knows, without a doubt, that Riko knows exactly what he is. But how? Neil doesn’t respond beyond a shrug.

Riko doesn’t seem to mind. He just smiles sharply, points at Katelyn one last time, and then heads back out the door. But as he’s leaving, one of his pant legs rides up, revealing a series of kanji going down the back of his thigh. He commits it to memory as Riko disappears around the corner.

Katelyn comes up behind him. “Don’t worry about the name thing, we’re pretty sure he does it on purpose. Upside is we can do it to him too without him throwing a shit fit, for once.” She notices Neil’s squinting at where Riko no longer is. “What?”

Neil shakes his head. “Nothing. I think. Hope.” Katelyn gives him a warning look, and Neil throws his hands up. “A hunch. The second I have anything to tell you, I will.” Katelyn squints at him, but then takes a deep breath, nods, and they get back to work.

* * *

 

Neil holds the notebook up to the camera, letting Renee see Neil’s recreation of the characters he saw on Riko’s thigh.

“I’ll look, but I can’t promise much. My reach is incredibly limited in Japan.”

“Looking is all I’m asking for,” Neil replies, tossing the notebook back onto the kitchen counter. “Thanks again, Renee.”

“What is this about, Neil? Is it relevant to the investigation?”

Neil considers his words carefully. “I think so, but I have no idea to what extent.”

“You think Tetsuji Moriyama is a supernatural being?” Neil shoots Renee an alarmed look, but she only flicks her hand in an  _ Oh please _ gesture. “Oh come on Neil, we pay your utilities. You think we didn’t profile literally everyone at that club?” She gives him a pointed stare. “I’ve kept Mrs. Minyard a secret from by superiors for now, but I’ll need an explanation eventually.”

Neil puts his head between his hands, elbows resting on the counter, and closes his eyes. “Thank you. And I’ll explain everything, when this is over.”

“It better be over soon. That blank check we gave you has an expiration date.”

“I know, I know. And to answer your question, it’s Tetsuji’s nephew, Riko. Something’s up with him and I don’t know what. He’s human, but he’s definitely aware of this business.”

Renee hums, displeased. “I’ll look. Talk later, Neil.”

“Talk later,” he says, and closes the laptop. He stares forward in his stool. With the sink at his back, he has an unobstructed view into the empty living room. He should really furnish in here. Outside, the sky darkens in preparation for the fall. Birds were singing earlier, but now they silence.

What is Neil going to do, once the job is over? Will he leave again? Should he? The rent is paid for the next eight months. If he left, his connections would start decaying. It would take a couple of days for the Foxhole to replace him; a week before some mishap destroyed every single copy of the rental agreement. In a month there would be nothing but memories, and in a year not even that.

Or he could stay. The club pays astonishingly well, but the penthouse is still hilariously above his price range, he’d have to find someplace cheaper. Hmm. Maybe he should liquidate some funds before the Church closes the account. And with demons coming to the club the way they are...

A phone rings, cutting off his train of thoughts. The caller ID says it’s Andrew, and Neil can feel himself smiling as he presses accept call. “Hey.”

“You don’t have a shift tonight, right?”

“Right. I’ll meet you guys at the club—”

“No you won’t. Pack a bag, we’re going on a road trip. Don’t bring your bike.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Chapter.  
>  **ROAD TRIP**  
>  Lmao yeah. Expect some very shippy things next chapter.  
>  **Why is Renee so stalkery?**  
>  Hey now, she's still the girl you know. She just has some mighty impressive bosses. Though defying higher powers like that...well, that's a quick foray into spoilerland right there ;)  
> What else, what else, hmm... there's a teensy bit of an easter egg in this chapter, a hint about the lore. Let's see if you guys find it. Even Neil managed to notice it, so I have faith in you guys.
> 
> Now then, the usual. Kudos for me means kudos to you, comments rest this gentle soul, and [anything to help me achieve my life-long dream of staring at my bank account in abject disappointment](https://ko-fi.com/atwrites) is appreciated. What? I didn't say it's a _good_ dream.


	6. Chapter 6

They taken an exit off the highway after 4 hours of driving. Andrew claims they have a destination in mind, but Neil has a sneaking suspicion he’s just winging it.

It’s the way he drives; more relaxed than Neil’s ever seen him, hand loose on the wheel and eyes the the horizon, not in wonder but in memory. Most people spend their lives wondering what’s just beyond that line, what secrets are hidden behind the curve of the earth. Andrew and Neil, they don’t need to wonder.

The turn into the exit puts the sun at their back, but the gold in his hair stays. Neil doesn’t think it’s the halo.

When they pass a sign saying they just crossed into the next state over, Neil sends Andrew a questioning look. Andrew sees his expression, but doesn’t answer with anything beyond a smug smile. Alright then, if Neil isn’t getting an answer to that question… “Why isn’t Katelyn with us?”

The smile disappears, replaced with Andrew’s usual careful neutrality. “She… we need to be apart today. I’ll explain when we get there.”

“There,” turns out to be, forty-five minutes later, a gravel road leading through a chain-link gate. FEDERAL PROPERTY: KEEP OUT is written on a big red sign in the middle. Woodland surrounds them, birds in sporadic song in the distance and the rustling of leaves in the wind all around. The moon can’t see them down here, the headlights of Andrew’s shitty sedan the only reliable light source.

Andrew steps out of the car, but motions for Neil to stay put when he moves to follow, and heads to the gate. He pulls something out of his pocket and does something to the lock, but from this angle Neil can’t tell whether he has a key or picked the lock. Either way, they’re driving again less than a minute later. They pass a power line maintenance shed not far in, but Andrew keeps going.

The road ends in a small cliff overlooking the woods. There’s a wooden picnic table here, and Andrew takes out a bag from the trunk and heaves it onto the bench. From the bag he unpacks an electric lantern, a disposable tablecloth, plastic utensils plates and cups, and a small array of food and drink. Nothing alcoholic.

Neil helps him arrange the table. It’s too early in the season for the weather to bite, but they still have to weigh the tablecloth down with small rocks so the wind won’t snatch it away. Andrew had brought sandwiches, and hummus and salsa and guacamole for the chips. All of it is store-bought and unopened.

They talk as they eat, but about nothing of importance. Kevin’s melodrama, Allison quitting to move to New York, and Addie just plain quitting. Eventually a silence falls onto the conversation, replaced by the sound of crunching chips. “Do you…” Neil looks at Andrew, who doesn’t seem to be sure how he wants to frame whatever he’s asking. “When Katelyn and I...when we were new, to this world, to ourselves, we went all over. We had no idea what was going on. Not until—”

“Not until you met the woman from Italy,” Neil finishes the sentence for him. Andrew nods. “So you found her.”

Whatever it was that happened to Neil that ripped his body to shreds and patched it back together with sentient entropy, it hardly left him with an instruction manual. In the beginning, he didn’t actually understand what it meant to devour demons. Hell, he didn’t even know that demons _existed._ Not until the woman found him. He had the distinct impression that he’d met her before, but the old lady never gave him any hints, not in that regard nor many others. What she did do was help Neil understand his own nature. How to eat, how to stay sane.

Neil had asked her if she knew how to turn him back to human. She’d said yes. Neil hadn’t asked her to elaborate.

“Yeah. Yeah, I found her,” he says, though really she had found him. He still doesn’t know how. He looks up at the stars instead of watching Andrew’s face. He doesn’t want to know what he’s thinking. His tattoos are itching; the animals are reacting to his discomfort at the memories, and he bets that if he were to pull up his sleeves he’d find them still for once, waiting for him to do something stupid, rather than in their usual hundred-sided battle.

“She taught us everything,” Andrew says. “But she’d never answer any questions. Not about what we are, what happened to us. Or what happened to my brother.”

Neil’s head whips around so fast the air almost cracks like a whip. He can feel the demons turning frantic. Are they really that excited? “Brother?”

“Twin. Aaron. We weren’t that closest, but… he and Katelyn were.” He’s not making eye contact. This is probably the most Andrew’s ever said about the topic. Still, a lot is starting to make sense.

Though it would probably make more sense if the demons weren’t trying to claw their way out of his fucking skin. They’re not just frantic, they’re terrified _,_ they’re _bloodthirsty,_ screaming nonsense into his head. That’s not Neil’s doing. He knows what this is.

“There’s an Other One here,” Neil says, standing up. Andrew is immediately on his feet too, eyes literally blazing. “Can you burn them?”

Andrew shakes his head. “No. Can you eat them?”

“No.”

Andrew’s eyes are darting around like a madman’s. “There’s a couple of crowbars in the trunk. It’s unlocked.” Neil nods and heads towards the car.

Neil doesn’t know exactly what Other Ones are, and trying to define them is like trying to define what counts as a sandwich. Their behavior ranges from mindless to Machiavellian, their appearance logical to Lovecraftian. Many of them are the basis of mythical creatures. Some _are_ those mythical creatures.

But the thing that charges out of the woods as Neil closes the trunk of the car, crowbars in hand? That’s no myth.

It looks sort of like the Pale Man, if the Pale Man was a quadruped the size of a military caravan, hurtling itself at Andrew with enough force to throw him off his feet and into a tree ten feet behind him. The force would’ve easily killed any normal human, and as it is Neil is forcing to convince himself that the dark spot on the oak was there before Andrew’s head slammed against it.

Neil drops one crowbar, runs at the monster at full speed, hops onto the wooden bench, then the table, and then launches himself at the monster’s head, remaining crowbar in both hands swinging down.

But the monster heard him coming, and charges at Neil, and so the crowbar doesn’t hit its head but right between its shoulder blades. The metal digs in deep enough to get stuck in place, and now Neil is standing on the back of a creature desperately trying to throw him off.

Neil and the monster turn as one when a yell comes from their right: Andrew, second crowbar in hand, using the moment to sweep the metal right into the monster’s jaw. It knocks the monster off balance, but in the end does more to make Neil lose his grip than actually hurt the thing. Worse, Neil can’t pretend Andrew is okay anymore; he’s swaying on his feet, and by the looks of it only managed to hit the monster by pure luck. The two of them are resilient, but Other Ones are tougher, older, and meaner than both of them combined. On the very short list of things that can feasibly kill them, Other Ones are right at the top.

Neil rolls off the monster’s back and scrambles to stand again, not bothering to brush the dry leaves and pine needles off his clothes. He runs to Andrew, who’s not even trying to move away from the monster’s path. The thing is running towards him on three legs, its right foreleg raised, ready to swipe Andrew off his feet again.

At this angle, he’ll go right over the cliff. Neil can’t make it to Andrew in time, and even if he could, he can’t hold something this large off forever. This is as bad as the situation can get.

Which is, of course, the cue for everything to get worse.

Beyond the sound of the wind and leaves and their own occasional grunting comes something far worse: a car. Big one, by the sound of it. He sees the lights not a few seconds later, coming down the road. It passes the power station, heading right towards them. Above the blinding light of the headlights, blue and red flash in sequence.

Fuck it, Neil thinks. Consequences can come later.

Neil isn’t really sure how he does what he does next. When the woman taught him this trick, she’d just said something vague about actions and reactions. All Neil knows is that he understands the demons now, their boundless energy in this moment. They’re not screaming nonsense, they’re all chanting in unholy choir: _pick me, pick me._

All of them want out, away, to do what they always have. Be what they always were. In his mind he picks a raven, one of the smaller ones, and then brings his right hand under his shirt and

                                                                        pulls

                                                                                     until its cupped in his hand. His vision is blurring, his hand is shaking. He brings his hand back, and then he throws the contents of his cupped palm at the Other One.

Neil isn’t strong enough at this point for the projectile to reach the creature. Good thing it doesn’t need his assistance.

The raven unfolds in midair, starlight granting definition like chalk on black paper. It lets out a cry, but it doesn’t make a sound. Nothing does, because when the raven has something to say the universe  _shuts up and listens._  The world is on mute. The leaves, silent. The wind, mute. The Other One’s screech as the raven flies headfirst into his mouth, hushed.

But the creature’s slow implosion? Its limbs growing, withering, contorting like a glitching computer model? The body devouring itself? The creature’s last cry, a grotesque corruption of every sound Neil ever loved? _That_ he hears just fine.

Neil falls to his knees. He’s weak. He’s tired. He’s hungry. He’s hungry. He’s hungry. He’s hungry. Then: a siren.

“Sir, you are trespassing on federal property. I need you to come with me.”

Oh.

Food.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um...chapter?  
>  **You said there'd be shippy stuff!**  
>  I did, didn't I? Yeah that was a lie. Sorry. It won't happen again.  
>  **ಠ~ಠ**  
>  Lmao yeah that's a lie too. I'm a discovery writer, okay? I know the overreaching plot, but I don't know what happens in a chapter until I write it.  
>  **Fine, fine. But can we talk about the part where Neil just called a _person_ food?**  
>  That's for next chapter.  
>  **Ugh**  
>  Yes, well. Anyway—  
>  **Yeah, yeah. Kudos, comment,[donate](https://ko-fi.com/atwrites). We know.**  
>  Aww, you care!  
>  **Oh shut up**


	7. Chapter 7

Neil can’t remember what he was dreaming about when Andrew prods him awake. Neil groans and slowly opens his eyes; every muscle hurts like he woke up from surgery, and his head is pounding from dehydration. Odd, he just ate.

He opens his eyes to a beautiful peach sky, dotted with shining diamonds, the sun just peaking over the cliff. Most people would probably be concerned about getting knocked out hard enough to be left unconscious for an entire night, but Neil is more resilient than most people by several points of magnitude.

“You awake?” Andrew says from a few meters away. Neil just groans again by way of response and turns his head. Andrew is standing off to the side, holding the crowbar he must’ve poked Neil with, covered in mud and blood and pine needles. There’s dark stains on his hair.

Neil tries to smile, and Andrew’s grip on the crowbar tightens. Then Neil starts noticing the wrongness of this picture. The way Andrew is standing too far away for Neil to reach but close enough for Andrew to swing. The soot in Andrew’s hair. The reminder that the cliff is facing  _ west _ . Neil wasn’t knocked out for a night, he was out for a full day.

Sore muscles. Extended period of unconsciousness. Andrew fearing him. It all comes together to form an image a thousand times uglier than the Other One they fought last night.

Neil closes his eyes. “How many.”’

“Two. They were park rangers. Park’s closed for the season so it’s just a skeleton crew. Nobody’s come looking for them yet. Emphasis on the  _ yet _ .”

Neil scrambles to stand up, but stops when Andrew shoves the crowbar into his chest. “What. The fuck. Was that.”

Neil tries making eye contact with Andrew, but he keeps avoiding Neil’s eyes. All these months Neil thought Andrew couldn’t see what those demons did; maybe he was just ignoring it, and now he can’t. “I’ll explain on the way back home.”

“You’ll explain  _ now _ , otherwise you’re either crazy or stupid if you think I’m letting you back in the car. Actually, that explanation better be good enough for me to decide not to burn you to cinders where you stand.”

Neil is pretty sure that Andrew is bluffing, but he’s equally sure that if he were to call Andrew out on it then it would stop being a bluff. Very slowly, Neil raises his hands to his collar. Andrew shoves the crowbar into Neil’s chest again, but he just stares at him and tugs the back of the collar until Andrew understands his intentions and lets him continue. Slowly, Neil takes off his shirt.

The demons are fighting, but that’s no surprise. They’re always fighting, always screeching, clawing, biting for any semi-plausible reason they can give themselves. The trick, Neil had figured out in his early days, lay in understanding what they’re fighting over. What emotion currently fuels the violence.

Right now, that emotion is pure, unadulterated panic.

Andrew can’t understand what he’s seeing, as he doesn’t have the context. He looks at Neil’s chest and he sees the birds and animals and lines of black black ether criss-crossing his body like he’s a canvas painting and someone’s been cutting out canvas piece by piece. He can’t see what Neil does: the patches of mismatched flesh across his lower abdomen, cutting off the lines of black at his navel. Less than 24 hours ago, those lines went all the way down to his thighs.

So he explains.

“Demons are naturally degenerative,” he says. Andrew’s eyes don’t shift away from his body. “I eat demons because if I don’t, I rot. Eating keeps me at an equilibrium. What I did last night… I basically tore off my own limb. I needed to replace it. Quickly.”

Andrew looks him in the eye, finally. Neil really wishes he hadn’t. “And it took eating two people to replace one demon?”

“It actually takes a bit more. It’s not an exact science, okay? I need to eat. Usually I eat demons, but if i’m desperate, like I was last night, then I’ll eat anything.”

Andrew squints at him, and shoves the crowbar into his chest for a third time. Frankly now it’s just getting annoying. “So you could eat me or Katelyn?”

Huh. Good question, actually. “No. I mean, yes, I could commit the physical act, but that’s like saying that a paralytic is physically capable of going up a flight of stairs. It just isn’t worth the potential harm. Hell, considering what I am and what you are, eating you might result in a nuclear explosion. Better not.

“Andrew, ask me anything and I will answer. But if we don’t leave here before their connections decay, somebody  _ will _ come looking.” Andrew keeps staring at him for a long moment, but eventually lets his arm down and lets Neil stand up. Neil dusts off his shirt and puts it back on.

As they walk to the car Neil takes a look at their surrounding, silently comparing it to the night before. The picnic table is half destroyed, pieces scattered all over the clearing. Where the Other One had stood there’s a small indentation in the ground going down to bedrock, like God just closed his fist around that area and pulled it out of reality.

The area slightly to the left of the road back, meanwhile, is a burned out husk. The park ranger’s car is still smoking slightly, and the ground around it is a charred scar. Oddly enough, none of the trees bear any sign of damage. “Uh…” Neil catches Andrew’s eye and points his thumb in the direction of the former fire.

“You made more than a bit of a mess out of those Rangers,” Andrew says, climbing into the car. He keeps the crowbar with him. “Easier to sell that they died by car explosion than technical cannibalism, don’t you think? Now get in the car. We both have work tomorrow.”

* * *

 

It’s about forty-five minutes into the drive that Andrew breaks the awkward silence. “So what exactly happened with the demon, and the Other One? Because I still don’t understand.”

“Neither do I, really.” The sky is dark again, dotted with stars. Burning in unfathomable size to wield back the enveloping dark. “It’s like… what do you know about electron shells?”

Andrew shoots him a confused look. “Neil, I was an assistant calculator for Manhattan, you know this. I think we can establish that I know a great deal more about this subject than you do.”

“Humor me.”

Andrew sighs. “An atom has two parts. The nucleus, which is made up of protons and neutrons, and then the electrons that float in orbit,” here Andrew makes air quotes around  _ orbit _ . “Around the nucleus. Every shell is a different orbit. The first one has a maximum of two electrons, and from then on every shell has a maximum of eight. Happy?”

“Almost.” The edge of Neil’s mouth curls slightly upward. None of this is funny, but he likes this. Andrew listening, talking. Talking to him. “What happens when an electron shell  _ doesn’t  _ have eight electrons?”

Andrew’s eyebrows rise in comprehension. He sees where this is going. “They react with other elements to create something new. Something with a full shell.”

Neil nods. “Best as I can figure, that’s sort of what happened last night. The raven had an incomplete shell.” Again, air quotes. “And so did the Other One. The reacted, and both disappeared.”

“And this is how it all works? Electron shells?”

Neil hums in very vague assent. “That’s my interpretation. So far I haven’t come up with a better metaphor. Though I’ll tell you what, I once sent a demon tattoo against an Other One, and the result was a pickle with a butt.”

Andrew laughs so hard Neil is worried he’ll crash the car. “I’m serious! It was a totally normal pickle, except it had a tiny, rough, green ass.” He’s laughing now too, and oh they are so gonna crash.

“Wh— what did you do with it?” Andrew asks between hiccups. Good god, he's actually hiccuping from laughter. 

“I threw it to some dog on the street!”

“ _ WHY?” _

“What do you mean  _ why? _ It was a pickle with a butt! That shit is creepy, I wasn’t gonna keep— _ oh shit.” _

Andrew’s foot slams on the breaks seconds before the hit the person who just fell onto the highway. They both scramble out of the car, questions ready, when the person stands up and turns around to face them. 

“Katelyn?”

“Hey!” She brushes loose gravel off of her shirt. “What are you guys doing here?”

“Why were you in the middle of the road?” Andrew walks towards her, blocking her face from the light of the headlights.

Katelyn points her thumb to the side of the road, where Neil can just barely make out her car. Smoking. “Engine gave out. It was bound to happen eventually, thank god I wasn’t going that fast.”

“Okay,” Neil says. “But that doesn’t explain why you were in the middle of the road.”

“Fell on a rock.”

“Ah,” Andrew says. “Well come on, we’ll call the tower in the morning.”

They climb into the car, Katelyn sitting in the back. Their appearance no longer reduced to silhouette by the headlights but rather left bare by the overheads, Katelyn takes a long look assessing them both. “Kay, Andrew, I know  _ I _ have a tendency to do dumb shit this time of year, but what the fuck happened to you two?”

“This time of year?” Neil asks, looking between them.

Katelyn looks to Andrew. “You didn’t explain to him?”

“I was going to, but then an Other One attacked. Didn’t leave us much opportunity for talking after that.”

“Tell me  _ what? _ Why were we up there? What time of year is it?”

“Will you please just—” Andrew raises his hand and makes a fist for emphasis. He takes a deep breath, then says, “Katelyn and I always spend these two days apart because the emotional strain is a bit hard on us. It always leaves us in a tender headspace, and if we spend it together it never ends well.”

“Why? What’s today? Or yesterday. Whichever.”

“The anniversary of my brother’s death.”

Neil feels like he’s been stabbed in the back, and he sn’t sure why. “Brother?”

“Twin,” Katelyn jumps in. “His name was Aaron. He and I… we were…” She’s having trouble articulating herself, but Neil nods in understanding. “Is that how you two met?”

Andrew and Katelyn share a look through the rear-view mirror. “Um...yes. Well, we assume so.” Andrew rests his eyes back on the road. “We know I had an identical twin brother, we know Katelyn was in love with him, and we know he died sometime around we became what we are. The rest…” He waves his hand around in a  _ same shit as always _ gesture, which is to say that neither of them remembers a thing. “Anyway, once a year we take a couple of days off and split up, go wherever. Be alone.”

Neil’s skin is crawling, and he doesn’t think it’s the demon’s doing this time. There’s a hot pain in his back and chest, like a phantom pain. 

He forces himself to ignore the feeling and nod along. “Okay. Anything else I should know? Any other dark secrets?”

Andrew takes a visible moment to think, and Neil isn’t sure if he’s kidding or not. “No,” he says finally. “You?”

Should he tell them? Probably not yet. But honesty is a better idea in the long run. “I was hired by the Vatican to spy on you.”

Andrew hits on the breaks so fast Neil’s face slams into the glove compartment, then hits the gas so Neil flies back into his seat. His nose is hurts like a bitch; he checks with a finger, and it isn’t bleeding, but he better breath through his mouth for the next day or so.

"I deserve that," Neil says.

“ _ You sold us out?” _ Andrew growls. Actually growls. Neil forgot he does that.

“Selling you out would have required me to know you before I did it.” He spares a glance at Katelyn, to gauge her mood. To spare the details, she probably would’ve done the same thing in Andrew’s place. “I ate Jean, I think we both know that. But then the next morning, I saw your halo.”

Andrew’s face is stony, set straight ahead. He’s probably remembering that day. Blaming himself, maybe? “How does the church figure into this?”

Neil shrugs. “They hate demons, I kill demons, so they help me out. When I told them I needed help staying in town, they asked why. They would’ve found out about you sooner or later so I just told them.”

“So they know who we are?” Katelyn asks.

“They know who Andrew is,” Neil answers. “So far, you’re still a secret, but any decision made on the subject really shouldn’t be made with that as a given.” 

The car falls into an awkward silence. Streetlights stencil Andrew in white, but they make his eyes freeze, not burn. Rush hour is over, the freeway finally living up to its name, and Andrew drives lazy curves around their neighbors in motion, without regard for lane markers. 

“They won’t hurt you,” Neil says.

Andrew laughs. It’s not a funny laugh. “How the fuck can you be so sure?”

“ _ Therefore whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold. _ ” Neil probably sounds facetious. He’s anything but. “Your name isn’t Cain, but hey, what’s the difference between one mythical earth-wanderer and another, right?”

Katelyn snorts. “And I suppose that makes you God in this scenario?”

Neil smiles. It’s not a happy smile. “Damn right it does.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Chapter.
> 
> ...Hello? Anyone?  
>  **Sorry! Sorry, traffic's a bitch**  
>  Well at least you're here now. Do you have anything to add?  
>  **Beyond a general _what the ever-loving fuck?!_  
> **  
>  Yes. Beyond that.  
>  **No I'm good.**  
>  Excellent. You know the rest. Kudos & comment & [donate](https://ko-fi.com/atwrites). Thank you and see ya!


	8. Chapter 8

Neil walks into the Foxhole shivering from the cold, despite the coat half his weight and the scarf covering his face. He shakes out the umbrella, getting rid of the small shards of sleet still on it, and then sticks it in the locker room. With the weather being what it is, Neil’s bike is a crash waiting to happen, so he’s been walking to work for the past month.

His shift is upstairs today, so he dons his black and orange uniform and takes the elevator upstairs. Katelyn and Andrew are already up there — Kevin had clued in that the three of them liked working together a while ago — arguing about something. “Hey,” he says, joining them in flipping chairs. “What’s going on?”

“The lease on our apartment is up at the end of the year, and we’re wondering what to do,” Andrew says. “There’s no real issue with the place, but the market’s been driving up the property value, and if we try to extend the contract the landlord will probably try to hike up the rent through the roof.”

Neil ponders the question. He has no experience to relate to here; the last time Neil had stayed in one place this long, Christians were still religiously opposed to bathing. But he can’t help but smile internally at the idea, of not knowing what to do when all you want is to stay where you are, with who you are. He thinks of his apartment, still virtually lifeless after six months. He has a bed and a tv and a couch and not much else. His home isn’t even a home, really, just a place to rest.

Maybe it’s time to change that.

“You could come live with me.” Katelyn and Andrew turn to him in surprise. He tries to act nonchalant, keeping his eyes on the work, though his heart is hammering. “The rent is paid for another few months, but after that I’ll need help paying the bills, and three paychecks can do it better than one.”

Katelyn arches a brow. “And how do we know we won’t be kidnapped in our sleep and experimented on?”

“You don’t,” Neil says cheerfully. Katelyn’s tactic for coping with Neil’s admission has manifested in humor. It was a bit awkward at first, but nowadays Neil takes it in stride. Andrew’s taken it the same way he takes in everything: complete silence. But he still hadn’t tried to kill Neil, or become any more hostile, so he’s taking it a win.

“But seriously. You’ve seen my place. Cheaper to move your stuff into my place than for me to just buy new furniture.”

Katelyn and Andrew look at each other, shrug, and turn to Neil. “Sure.”

* * *

 

It takes Andrew and Katelyn two days to move in. A day where they bring in all of their stuff, and then the three of them spend the night on couches and mattresses like they’re squatting in a shitty antique store, and then another day to get everything sorted.

Somewhat to Neil’s surprise, Andrew is the one to care the most for aesthetic. Less surprising is his dedication to laziness, resulting in several hours of Neil and Katelyn lugging around furniture as Andrew barks petulant demands from three feet away without any inclination he’s going to help. That finally ends when he refuses to stand up from the very couch he’s telling them to move, and Katelyn elects to simply tip the thing over and bury him underneath. They make him buy ice cream after, too.

The schedule, of course, changes accordingly. They no longer spend their nights at the Foxhole, instead simply hanging out in the living room and doing whatever. They’ve grown tired of stories, and while there are always more to tell, for now, the future is more appealing than the past.

“Okay but seriously,” Neil says. “One place that you want to go to but still haven’t.”

Katelyn swirls her drink around in her glass. “Hmm. I don’t know if it counts, but I’ve never see the Eiffel Tower. We left France before the revolution and never really came back.”

But Neil shakes his head. “Doesn’t count. Someplace you’ve _never_ been.” He turns to Andrew. “How about you?”

“Japan,” Andrew answers, not even hesitating. Katelyn points at him and nods in agreement.

“I’ve been,” Neil says. “About three times, actually. Once in the 12th century, then the 15th, then again in 1858, after the Americans made them reopen the borders.” He casts his eyes up in memory. “Wanna know something odd?”

Katelyn shrugs. “Sure.”

“When I came back in 1856? There were no demons in Japan. I mean, there were plenty the last time I was there, same as any place, but after? Zilch. Plenty of Other Ones, but no demons whatsoever.”

“That is...odd.”

Neil nods. “Yep. Anyway, are we ordering pizza or Thai?”

* * *

 

The TV shuts off, stripping the room of the last source of light it has. Neil knows he should get to bed, but he’s perfectly okay where he is, curled up in a nest of blankets, Andrew next to him in a nest of his own.

They’d been carrying out their new Saturday night tradition: find a some random c-list horror movie on netflix and then tear it to shreds. It passes the time quickly, though sometimes Neil  wishes it wouldn’t. There’s been very few moments in his life he can unquestionably call _fun_ , and he wants to savor it as much as he can. He’s like a man who clawed his way out of starvation: the need is gone, but the instinct to hoard and preserve is still there.

“What time it?” Neil asks. Andrew pulls out his phone and declares it 1:30 AM. Katelyn will be back in three hours. Neil has a shift in eight. “Hmm. Wanna watch another movie?”

But Andrew isn’t answering. His eyes are distant, staring at the black screen. The contrast between bright screen and dark room was so severe that Neil is still seeing rectangles floating before his eyes, flashing in various colors. “It won’t alway be like this.”

Neil furrows his brows. “What do you mean?”

Andrew seems to have barely heard him, but answers anyway. “We...we’re constant. We don’t go anywhere, change anyway. But everything around does. It never stops. We are fires that will burn forever, but we still _burn_ . And eventually everything we know will be gone and there will be something new instead and rinse and repeat until it just _stops._ ”

Neil wants to ask where Andrew is going with this, but has a feeling he already knows. It would seem they have a fear in common. “You won’t lose this, Andrew,” he says softly. Andrew doesn’t turn to face him, gives no acknowledgement he hear, but Neil continues. “That TV? Yeah, it’ll be gone one day. Way they make them nowadays, probably sooner rather than later. The movie we just watched? Give it time and no one will remember it. Everything here around us, none of it will last forever.

“But it doesn’t _need_ to. Because they will have made an impact. You’ll remember living here. You’ll remember being here tonight. You’ll remember _me_.” Andrew finally turns at that, and Neil smiles. “You won’t lose me, I promise.”

“I don’t like promises,” Andrew says. “Live long enough and they always get broken eventually.”

“That’s because you never got a promise from someone who could live long enough to keep them.”

Andrew squints at him, like he’s not sure Neil isn’t some anxiety and sleep deprivation-induced lucid dream. “We should go to bed,” Andrew says, apparently electing to see if fixing the latter issue can make Neil go away. Neil hums in lieu of responding, and burrows himself deeper into the blanket. “No, seriously, you have work in the morning,” he continues, even as he joins Neil. Neil leans his weight on Andrew’s side, just slightly, and closes his eyes.

“New house rule: talking about work and turning oneself into a human burrito are two mutually exclusive activities,” Neil says, and then promptly falls asleep.

* * *

 

Andrew hands Neil an ice pack, and he takes it gratefully. They’re in the break room of the club, Neil sitting on the cheap wood while Andrew leans against the fridge. A demon had the mind to put up a fight, punching Neil in the face more than once, and it will likely leave a nasty bruise for a while yet. “Thanks.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Andrew’s tone is mild, but Neil knows in his gut he’s masking the true depth of what he’s feeling. Andrew’s demeanor is a step beyond the usual definition of _reserved_ , but Neil likes it. It means his expressions are genuine, his signals clear. Clarity is good.

“Yes, I promise I’m fine.” Neil’s assurances seem to hit their mark, but Andrew doesn’t take his eyes off of Neil. He’s searching for something, like it’s hidden behind Neil’s eyes. Neil has a feeling he knows what.

Neil leans forward, just a few millimeters, but Andrew notices. He takes a half step towards Neil, a shuffle of his feet, really, coming to rest his hands on either side of Neil. Their position means Andrew needs to tilt his head up, but Neil doesn’t care and he doubts Andrew does either when their lips meetttuvwxyza̘͕̮̙̰͠ͅb̗͕c͓̟̗͎͡d̤̠e̥̪̼̯̰̪f̟̹͉̯̥g̢̜̪h̞͍̫̮͍i͚̝̖j̶̹̖̮̱k̴̛̤̳͎̩͓̯̥̕ͅl̸͡҉͇̗͙̱̱̖m̸̡͠҉̤͈̤̮͙͔̟̯̫ͅn̴̴̛͕̯̰̩̘̬̳͕͖̤͔͈̮̪̤ͅọ̸̴͕̫͔̬̺̪̝̤̪̰̮͘̕p̵̧̪̘͍͚͕̹͈̹͍̻̝̪q̛͇̣̺͚̤̪̠̪̝͕͇͟͠r̢͙̯͍̖̘̼̦̟͖̝̠͜s̨̺̘̱̖̜̰͖̰͎̩̤̺͓̤̖̕ Ȩ̶̣̯͍̺̥͇ͪ̾̍ͮ̇ͯ̄ͧͫ̇͗̉͢͠͝R̷̄ͨ̃ͮͣͫ͛̀̔ͤ͒̈̿͐͐ͫͦ͋҉̨͓̦̬̳̬͍̣͔̱̼̺̥͕̺̯̰̟ͅR̻͎̗̩̖̣͔̮̃̆̇̄̋̆̏̆͛̄̿͘͝Ỏ̸̶̝̱͙̰̥͓̰͕͇̔ͩ̈́̉͋ͤ̓͢͞R̡̪̮̣͙͈̖̰͍̼̤̆̏̀̎̇͑̌̇̋ͩͫ̈́͑̄͌͐ͥ͝

 

bookjellyfishe, hurricaneha _ **i**_ ley, NocturnalReaper, _**S**_ overeignofmysoul, bootson, devil4y, li _ **t**_ eralydying, Draya09, GeistSKrank, Book_lover16, stormageddondarklordofbuns, xsoft _ **h**_ ie, sunflowersafehaven, godot (jengu), Robinfyre, ser _ **a**_ cea, Stairwaytoheaven, AokazuSei, _**t**_ hegleameyesGin, Sophie_21, darknesscrochets, Skilune, el _ **y**_ theia, minikitty7,mess _**o**_ famess (trashiestrash), b _ **u**_ cketlove, TransientDream (xflyingbutterflies), LadyKnightOfHollyrose, chansooisreal, Halleythe _ **g**_ reat, bod123, kittenruffle, XExcelsior, this_strangebewilderment, Em _ **o**_ tionalSoda, hailey98, Elyant, wesninski, Izz, LillithBlack, PetitRenar _ **d**_

01001110 01001111 00101100 00100000 01000010 01010101 01010100 00100000 01000011 01001100 01001111 01010011 01000101 00101110 00100000 01001110 01001111 01010111 00100000 01001100 01001001 01010011 01010100 01000101 01001110 00100000 01000011 01000001 01010010 01000101 01000110 01010101 01001100 01001100 01011001 00101110

* * *

 

ACT ONE: FIN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **YO WHAT THE FUCK**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> **HELLO**
> 
>  
> 
> **...**
> 
>  
> 
> **FUCK**


	9. Interlude

I was born a contradiction, though that isn’t where the story begins. It begins, well, at the Beginning. Capital B. That’s quite a bit before my days, so let me explain.

You know the basics, I’m assuming; they teach it in grade school nowadays. Nothing, then a huge boom, and then the same nothing but now with  _ thing _ scattered all over the damn place. Giant mess. Well, no, not giant. Tiny. Subatomic. But then subatomic became atomic, and then microscopic, and then macroscopic, and then it started exploding all over the fucking place because what else would it do.

But that? That was new. Formulation. Creation. Changing the universe at a fundamental level with additive effect. Things  _ existed  _ now.

And then, like I said. Contradiction.

I don’t know the underlying rules behind it, except that existence required balance. No extreme is infinitely sustainable, and so every force requires an equal opposing force. And so they existed, and so did we. Where they fissioned, we collapsed. They were supernovas and we were black holes, they were gravity and we were time. They wove a tapestry of reality and we painted its threads in beautiful entropy.

It was perfection, right up until some chucklefuck decided to throw sentience into the mix.

I’ve been around for a long time. I’ve seen some shit. I’ve seen 99.999% of the shit there is to see. And as someone who has seen all that, let me tell you: the concept self awareness is the worst thing to ever happen to this universe.

Because once we realized that we  _ were _ , we realized  _ who  _ we were, and what we did. And with that knowledge, with the awareness of the power we wielded, we became prideful. Then we noticed that for every action we took, there was another whose work directly undid ours, and we grew hateful.

This is when the rift formed, really. Up until then we were all just beings, each with a role on their own. Now we divided, became the Makers and the Unmakers. And we fought. And by “fought” I mean we did the exact same things we always did, because it’s not like we knew how to do anything else, but now we did it with malicious intent. Imagine the sky turning into a kaleidoscope, day and night coming and going according to the whims of a thousand arguing voices, stars flickering like passing car lights through mesh. The universe on fast forward. 

And we did that for...well, we didn’t exactly measure time back then. All I know is that at some point, “someone” turned their attention to some area of space too small for anybody to care about unless they were right there, and they saw  _ you. _ Earth. Humans. And none of us, not the Makers and not the Unmakers, knew what you were. So the Makers pushed, and the Unmakers pulled, and we waited to see what you’d do in response.

And you did  _ nothing. _

I mean, you  _ reacted,  _ sure, but you didn’t  _ retaliate. _ You acclimated. You took the blow and then worked around it. It was fascinating, and frustrating, and completely foreign to us. We were beings of absolutes. Every action was an Action, every move a Move. And here you lot were, faced with the truth of the cosmos itself, and all you did was go  _ huh _ and then went on with your day.

That was effectively the end of the war, as it was defined back then. Who would bother with this tug-o-war of absolution when we could watch you, mess with you. Little kids poking at an ant hill, that’s what we were.

And then we decided to become ants ourselves.

It was my side’s fault, really. We wanted to see you down to the smallest particle, and so we took our absolute power and made it absolutely beyond our reach. You probably know the riddle, can a god create a stone he can’t lift? Well of course he can; it’s not a question of two contradicting parameters, it’s installing one parameter where none previously existed. We had no limits until we made our own. Fucking idiots, the lot of us.

The Makers followed us down soon after, probably afraid we’d ruin their new toys. We took the forms of this world, to the best of our ability, and then we played and fought and dragged all of you into it. We screamed and whispered and prodded and needled to push you to our ways, our thoughts. Some tried to try their hands at their own versions of you. That’s what the Other Ones are, in case you’re wondering how  _ that _ went. This was a neutral world, and we destroyed it with glee.

One thing we didn’t know, but should have: the Makers weren’t as foolish as us, as impulsive and brash. When they tumbled down from stardust to solid form, they prepared. Built a back door, of sorts, to let them climb up to the stars again when they wished. And one day, they did wish. You know which day I’m talking about, don’t you?

But that’s not the point. Point is, they won. Left us here in a world decaying but bodies that won’t. Half of us are still running around obsessed with getting back up there, never mind that obsession being how we got stuck here in the first place. The rest of us...well. Here we are.

But here’s the thing, what we didn’t understand at the beginning and are only starting to understand now: we are absolution. We are facts of reality unto themselves. Humans are no such thing. You exist because of reasons outside of us and unknown to us. We attempt to mimic your shape and fail miserably at it because we are so fundamentally different that I don’t even know where to begin. The Makers grow, and the Unmakers corrode, and to union such power with humanity is like throwing alkaline metals in the open air. It is debasement of the most basic kind.

Do you understand what I’m telling you, Aaron?

**You’re telling me that they’re going to die. And they’re going to take a whole lot of people with them.**


	10. ACT II

Neil collapses off the counter, conscious but feeling as if he was kicked in the guts. His back is burning in agony, as if he'd grown wings only for them to be ripped off in one savage pull. He coughs, trying to regain his breath, and it takes him a few minutes before he manages it. Flashes of color hurtle through Neil's mind, interrupting any possible train of thought. All except...

"Andrew?" Neil picks up his head, slowly moving his hands beneath him for support. A groan answers Neil, and so he looks in that direction to find Andrew in a similar position on the other side of the room, six feet away. There's a slight dent in the plaster above him, subsequent dust scattered over the floor. Was Andrew thrown into the wall?

"Andrew," Neil says again. Groans, really. "Andrew are you okay?"

It takes him a minute, but Neil sighs in relief when Andrew lets out a raspy "Yeah."

"What happened?" Neil isn't sure how to even answer that. "We... I kissed you and then..."

"I don't know. It was. It was like I was seizing." The colors are still flying through Neil's head, but they're gaining definition. Clarity. But it all makes even less sense than before.

Andrew nods, but he's quiet. Pensive. Neil hedges his bets and says, "You see it too, don't you?" Andrew hesitates, but nods. "What do you think they are?" Neil asks.

Andrew's eyes are dancing left to right, responding to input none but the two of them can see. "Memories. They're memories."

And like a key in a lock, a single image in Neil's mind gains focus.

* * *

  _The house was freezing this late at night, and Nathaniel was buried under the blankets. The hearth drowsed off hours ago, just like every other living soul in the house, but Nathaniel was still awake. He was shaking, but from anticipation. He just had to wait until..._

_There. Second bell, muffled by the distance between the house and the church. Nathaniel shrugged off his blankets and crept to the window. He's already changed out of his nightgown and into his winter clothes hours ago. The frame didn't open far, but Nathaniel had yet to shoot up in height like his mother said he would, and like some of the other boys Nathaniel recognized in the streets sometimes already started to._

_The trick, once out the window, was not to fall to his death two stories below. But despite the night's chill, the air was dry, and Nathaniel's fingers had not yet succumbed to the lethargy of the cold. So Nathaniel made his way a window over, to where curtains were drawn to hide an empty guest room, crouched down to reach for the only branch of the olive tree that had grown on the property even before Nathaniel's father's time. In three short moves, Nathaniel was on the ground. He could have managed in two, but silence took priority over speed._

_That was not to say that Nathaniel didn't run as if chased by a demon once he was away from the house. Through silent streets, too late for any forgotten candle to light the darkness. He was careful not to trip over any loose cobblestones as he neared Mateo's cobbler shop, and made his way around the building. The window of the back of the house was dark just like any other, but Nathaniel knocked anyway._

_"Neil," he whispers. "Neil, are you okay? Get up."_

* * *

Neil's ears are ringing. Nathaniel. His name had been Nathaniel. And that city... Neil knows that city. But how? The answer sits on the tip of his tongue and deep inside his mind, and it threatens to drive him insane.

Slowly, the ringing ebbs away, and Neil realizes he's being addressed.

"Neil, hey," Katelyn says as Neil comes back to himself. "What happened to you two? I leave for like five minutes and you guys are on the floor comatose. She looks concerned.

Neil shakes is head and tries to get up, but in the end he needs Katelyn's help to do it. His hands are shaking and his legs are jelly, and it takes all of his efforts just to sit in the chair without falling off.

Andrew is already sitting opposite him, looking to be in a similar state. Neil isn't sure what he told Katelyn, and so he sends Andrew a questioning look, but Andrew just shrugs.

"You guys care to explain?" Katelyn's voice is slightly haughty, like she caught them doing something stupid, but Neil can tell she's genuinely concerned."

"We're, uh, not sure." Neil isn't even sure if he understands what Andrew is thinking about. "It was a demon-related thing. I think."

"You think?"

"Again, I have no idea what just happened. We'll have to compare notes at home later."

Both of them look to Andrew, who again just shrugs.

The door to the break room opens, and Matt stands in the doorway. "Hey Neil, how's the eye—

holy shit what happened in here?" Matt looks around the room, examining the damage, and suddenly Neil notices just how much damage there actually is.

To Neil, armed with context, it looks like he'd been turned into a magnet that not only repelled Andrew, but also nearly every object in the room. The table and chairs seem fine, but the fridge is leaning on the wall at an angle. Shelves have cleared their contents onto the floor,, one shelf even collapsing entirely, and the water cooler is on the floor, miraculously intact.

"Something came loose," Katelyn said to Matt with a very convincing _those poor babies_ look. "Threw them both to the floor, knocked Andrew into the wall."

Matt didn't even make eye contact, he just kept surveying the room in slight horror, but he nodded along to Katelyn's words. "All right. Well, are you two okay?" He aimed the question at Andrew and Neil, and they both gave small nods. "Good. Right the fridge and the cooler, fix this place up a little bit real quick, and then come back outside, you'll come back to clean it when things start winding down later. And Katelyn, change into Nest slacks, they need you upstairs." He waits for them to nod again, and then closes the door behind him.

Katelyn leaves with one last affirmation to their well being, and then Neil and Andrew are alone again. Testing himself, he finds that he can actually stand up on his own now, but he still feels hollow. Like he's a glass bottle drained of the liquid inside. They right the fridge and the cooler together in silence, but when they begin picking up bags of snacks on the floor and lacing them on the counter, Andrew asks, "What did you see?"

Neil turns to him, and Andrew clarifies, "I saw something. In the memories. Something I'd forgotten. And I don't forget. I know you saw something too. What was it?"

Neil took a moment to compose himself, trying to explain his recollections; the cold of the house, the anxiety of his escape, the exhilaration of going to meet... whoever was in that cobbler's shop. In the end, he only shook his head. "I can't," he apologized. "It's too... it's too soon. And I saw too little. This isn't something I can share." Neil scratched at his back, which was still itching like hell. He'll have to check that out later. "I'm sorry."

But Andrew shakes his head. "No, you're right. It was rude of me to ask."

"It's fine."

"I saw my brother," Andrew announces, and Neil looks at him. "He was... I couldn't manage to see any context. But I saw him in a jail cell. An old one. Like, from around—"

"A thousand years ago? Give or take?"

Andrew looks at him, then nods. "I remember there was someone speaking in the background, but I couldn't hear them well enough to place the language."

Neil doesn't know how to respond to that, so he doesn't. They fall back into silence, finish cleaning up what they can, and then head back out the door

* * *

 

The lights in Neil's room are off when he wakes up, but the curtains are open and sunlight streams through, thankfully too late in the day to shine directly into Neil's eyes.

Neil runs a hand over his face, feeling every bump and bruise. A glance at the hand afterward doesn't reveal any blood, so Neil considers it a success. His back, however, is straight up killing him. With a groan, he takes a shirt and pair of underwear from his dresser and heads to the shower. The mirror is completely steamed over, meaning either Andrew or Katelyn had just showered themselves.

The hot water does wonders on his sore muscles, but he still feels a persistent sting between his shoulder blades. Annoyed, he rinses his hair and climbs out of the tub. He'd left the window ajar before he got in, so by now there's no steam on the mirror for him to wipe away. The January chill creeps in without the hot water to keep it at bay, but Neil barely notices, staring at his tattoos.

Something is wrong with the animals.

Usually Neil's arms are a rainbow of colors, every animal fighting for their own piece of skin. But today Neil's forearms are almost black with how many of them are overlapping. It's like they're terrified of going further than just slightly beyond Neil's elbow.

With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Neil fishes through the drawers until he finds a reasonably sized handheld mirror. It takes a bit of wrangling, but finally Neil has a good look at his upper back.

Jean is awake, prowling across his back. His eyes are red, almost glowing, and his teeth are bared for all to see.

But it's worse than that.

Because the lion is awake too.

Unlike Jean, the lion hasn't moved yet. but for the first time in Neil's dodgy but _very_ long memory, its eyes are open, and it surveys its surrounding. Neil doesn't have to check to know that this is the source if the itch, and he has a feeling he knows how long the lion's been awake, too.

Something happened last night. Something major, and dangerous. Neil has no doubt that his pattern for the past several centuries is about to collapse, in more ways than one. There's something buried in his history, Andrew's and Katelyn's too, and it's starting to resurface.

The rules of the game are changing, and they don't know how, but they better learn to adapt before they lose everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey, I'm back.
> 
> Looks like things are picking up.


	11. Chapter 11

“No no no, but listen,” Neil says, untangling a finger from around the neck of his beer bottle to point at Katelyn. He’d said those words six times already. “Kevin and I, we thought he’d die. But he’s not. I take it back, he’s not. The girl, whatsherface, K-something, fuck hold on what’s her name—”

“Sharon?” Andrew offers from the blue armchair, halfway through a pint of Rum and Raisin (with more rum than usual).

“Yes! Bingo. Anyway she’s totally sacrificing herself for him. And you know why they’re gonna do it?”

Katelyn points right back at Neil. “Because this show was written by straight guys.”

“Because this show was written by straight guys.”

Andrew snorts. “Oh, so you can do better?”

“Fuck no, I’d have killed them all and been done with it like two seasons ago.”

“Sure, sure.”

Neil’s phone chiming interrupts further conversation. Renee’s contact flashes on the screen, so Neil takes a second to compose himself and signal for Katelyn to turn down the tv, still on commercial break, before answering. “Hey, what’s—”

“Are they with you?” Neil’s head is fuzzy, and all he can manage in response is a vague sound of confusion. “The angels. Andrew and Katelyn. Are they with you.”

“Um, yeah, why?”

“Put me on speaker.”

Neil does so, and puts the phone down on the coffee table. “They’re listening.” Both give Neil a question look, but all he can do is mouth “I don’t know.”

“Right then, first of all, hello, I’m Renee Walker, I’m the head of the Vatican Archives Heritage Conservation department.”  _ Acquisitions department  _ would be more honest, but Neil supposes he can’t fault her for wanting to make a good first impression.

Unfortunately, that ship never quite docked, because Katelyn isn’t impressed by the title. “Yes. We know who you are.”

“And I you, obviously. And as of eighty minute ago, so do my bosses.”

Neil scoots closer to the phone, like the proximity means something. “What happened?”

“They’re getting tired, Neil. What you promised was tangible proof of the existence of God. That’s a lot of power for the Church to wield. A  _ lot.” _

“They’ve tried to do this before, I’d remind you.” Andrew’s tone is neutral. Cold.

“See, you know that and I know that. My bosses, however, are still on the brink of that discovery. They’re getting restless, hunting for information. The archivists and I aren’t volunteering anything, but we’re not withholding it either. What do you think will happen when they find the truth about the Vatican’s oldest endeavor and greatest failure?”

Neil cocks his head at the phrasing, but Renee is on a roll and won’t be stopped. 

"Neil, give up. Whatever the three of you are doing in that city, drop it and leave. It isn't worth it."

"Well," Andrew says, voice sharp as a razor despite the alcohol. "Thanks for the advice, but I don't believe I asked you." He reaches for the phone and, before Renee can voice a response, ends the call.

Neil closes his eyes, rests his head on the back of the armchair, but doesn't let his mind wander. Because for the past three days, any time he does  _ that _ , his mind always returns to the same place: the itch on his back.

The lion has not gone back to sleep, and neither has Jean. Instead they've tugged at the back of his mind like a persistent wind through every waking moment and—Neil suspects—his sleeping moments too.

Everything is collapsing. The first time in his life where he found something  _ actually  _ permanent, and now it was all falling down around him harder than it ever did before.

"So what do we do?" Katelyn looks at them both. "The church, for all their inability to actually kill us, are still a very nuisance. And the way Renee said what she did..."

"They do know how to kill us," Neil says, and inwardly winces at the looks sent his way. "They've caught me, here and there, over the centuries, and it was always the same story over and over again. A member of the clergy brings me in, makes a big show among his colleagues of how he's going to exorcise me—I'm not completely sure, but I know at least a couple of these were stunts meant to help their nominations for popeship—and then locks me away for months. Then, right as they start talking about how they've found 'the answer to everything,' some nobody servant would break me out, rambling about nonsense."

"Wait, seriously?" Andrew asks incredulously. "You couldn't have just escaped on your own?"

Neil gives him a level look. "And how would I have done that?"

"I mean, you could've released a few of the demons and—oh, right. Forgot."

Neil presses his lips together and nods slowly in confirmation. "Escape wasn't worth slaughtering who knows how many people. Plus, after a while, I just grew to expect it."

"Huh," Katelyn says. But after a moment, she shakes her head and gets up. "I'm sorry, no. There are too many details flying around, and I feel like we're ignoring a big picture that's right in front of us. Sober up, you two. We got work to do."

* * *

 

Apparently, Katelyn is the cork-board-and-red-string type, because that's what Neil is looking at right now. Piles of text, a couple of images they printed out, all connected in a web so convoluted it has no hope of ever catching flies. Most noticeable is the lack of any actual red string. Because when they tried to put all of the pieces together, they discovered that none of it fits.

"Okay," Katelyn says, clearly trying not to look disappointed. The board stands on an easel in front of the couch where the three of them sit. Katelyn is leaning forward in concentration, Neil has his forearms resting on his knees, and Andrew is leaning back against the backrest, one arm slung over the side. "Let's see what already connects at the very basic level, and what doesn't."

"Well," Neil says. "None of us are human, and even among non-humans, we're unique."

"Our powers are inverse," Andrew comments, cocking his head. "But in the end we're basically capable of the same things. Nobody knows who we are—"

"Except the church," Katelyn continues. "Who seem to know us from the very beginning."

“And the woman from Italy,” Neil points out. “She knew a great deal about us, for whatever reason.”

“Do you think Matilda had anything to do with the church?”

Neil and Andrew turn to Katelyn. “Matilda?”

Katelyn’s face scrunches up. “Yeah, that definitely wasn’t her name, but it started with an M, I’m sure of that.” She gestures towards Andrew. “Remember when we split up for a bit, right after the black death? Well I got curious, went looking for her. She’d been mortal, it turned out, meaning she died like a hundred and fifty years before that, but I managed to find her grave in Rome. Goddammit, what was her  _ name _ , I can’t remember.”

Neil’s mind is already exploring the possibilities. He turns to Andrew. “Do you think she was a member of the church? So far they’d been the only ones with any clue about us.”

“Maybe. I think we’re looking at it from the wrong angle. How  _ does _ the church know about us? And why is it a secret so big that each generation had to discover it independently?”

That’s... actually a good point. A picture is forming in Neil’s mind, supported only by hypotheticals and...rudely interrupted by Katelyn smacking the arm of the couch without warning. “Mary!”

“What?” Neil says, his mind reeling. 

“The woman from Italy, her name was Mary!” Katelyn iss beaming, pleased with herself for having figured it out, but a fog is rolling over Neil’s mind...no. Not a fog. It was all distorting, his vision turning everything around him into crystal and painted glass.

And in the space between heartbeats, it shatters.

* * *

 

_ Nathaniel squirmed in his seat, legs itching to get up and run, but he knew better than to give in to his instincts. Still, the wood of the pew of was uncomfortable, and the smell of incense was suffocating, especially in the late spring heat. _

_ On the stage, Father droned on about God—Nathaniel had lost track of the specifics about ten minutes into the sermon. He looked to the cloisters, where his mother was huddled. _

_ The sermon took another hour to finish, and Nathaniel wanted nothing more than to run as far from this place as humanly possible. But instead he stood there, and he let them come, and he endured question after question about his health (“In the graces of God”), his marriage status (Nothing his father was willing to share, though Nathaniel personally doubted he’d still be a bachelor by year’s end), and, of course, how Mary was doing.  _

_ “My mother is unwell, so she stayed home for the day so she may recover from her sickness,” he said, over and over again. Only that first half was true; his mother’s health was in the gutter, ture, but she’d still come for the sermon. Father didn’t trust leaving her at home, after the last time she tried to run away. _

_ His mother. _

_ Mary. _

_ His mother, Mary. _

* * *

 

Neil opens his eyes to find himself exactly in the same position he’d been before: hunched over on the couch, Andrew and Katelyn looking at him with concern. He glances at the clock. Not even a minute had passed. “Neil, are you okay?”

“She was my mother.”

Katelyn gives him a concerned look, but Andrew seems to understand what happened. “You had a flashback, didn’t you?”

Neil nods, then elaborates. “The woman from Italy. Mary. She was my mother. My father was a preacher, in Rome.”

Andrew squints at him, and when Neil returns the look, he leans over to where they’d pushed the coffee table beforehand, retrieves the liquor and tumblers, and pours each of them a drink. “What do you remember, from the flashback?”

“About what?”

Andrew shrugs. “Anything. Everything.”

The next several hours, Neil racks his brain for every detail he can come up with: the design of his father’s robes, the layout of the church, artworks on the walls. Katelyn studiously googles as fast as she can, and Andrew makes notations of everything she misses. The sun crosses the horizon twice before they stop, exhausted and hungover.

Neil looks to the corkboard. On the one hand, they’re not closer to any solid answers. On the other, they have a direction. Previously, they thought themselves something unkowable, here and there clashing with the tides of human history and religion. But now they know better. They—or at least Neil—had come from a place they could name, known people they could research. The hunt was on.

Question was, what would happen if they didn’t find the answers first?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, okay, so my posting schedule went to hell. Sorry about that. Expect this fic to be done by mid-january. If it isn't, you're welcome to [come into my tumblr and berate me.](http://aledethanlast.tumblr.com/)


	12. Chapter 12

Riko is back in the foxhole on Tuesday, and he looks like a man on death row. His clothes rumpled, his hair all over the place. He doesn’t look injured, or panicked, but as he stumbles through the doors just past two o’clock, he looks _desperate_.

Neil is wiping down tables when he came in; there had been a fistfight last night, and leftover bits of dried blood were still left on the table and floor. From the gallery, he has a perfect view of Tetsuji’s nephew running in in a rush. Not that he needs it, because he would’ve heard Riko yelling “JOSTEN” from the other side of town.

Neil leans over the age and rests his arms on the railing. “Hello,” Neil drawls, intending to say something witty, but frowns when Riko started running up the stairs. He stops a foot away from Neil, out of breath. “What’s going on?”

Riko raises his head to look up at him. “You’re him, right? I’ve never seen pictures, but you fit the description.”

Neil looks at him blankly, and Riko’s own expression changes slowly, his eyes darting here and there as he puts the pieces together. Which is bully for him, since Neil still has no idea what the fuck is going on.

Riko straightens his back, takes a deep breath, and looks Neil in the eye. “Do you remember where you were on December 14th, 1858?”

Neil’s first instinct is to question Riko about why he thinks he was alive in 1858, but it’s like being told not to think of blue elephants; his mind immediately jumps to answer the question.

And it lands in Japan.

Oh. Oh no.

Neil takes a long look at Riko, comparing him to the images in his memory. Riko’s chin is rounder, eyes lighter. Must’ve been a bit of foreign influence down the years. But the blood is still there.

“You’re Kengo’s…” Neil can’t even finish the sentence, but he doesn’t need to. Riko nods.

“I’m sorry, I was willing to let you be, but that’s not an option anymore. The situation back home is getting worse, the Councillors are getting worse… I need to know where the distant prince is.”

Neil furrows his brows in confusion. “Who?”

Riko pauses to stare at him, then cocks his head to the side. “How much do you know about us?”

“Define _us_.”

That must’ve been the answer Riko was afraid of, because he closes his eyes and lets out a slow breath. “The woman from Italy seriously never told you anything, huh.”

“Okay, there are _way_ too many holes in this conversation.” Riko moves to speak again, but Neil casts his hands between himself and Riko, palms out. “No. I have work to do. It ends at four, at which point you and I are going back to my house, and you’re going to explain _everything_. So I suggest you use the time to gather your thoughts.”

Riko hesitated, probably considering whether to disagree, but in the end just closed his mouth, nodded once, and stalked out.  
  
Neil sighed in frustration. This was not going to be a fun day.

* * *

 

Riko’s eyes darted back and forth around the apartment, taking in the clashing upholstery and wide windows and messy kitchen counter — Neil really needed to do the dishes — before finally landing on the corkboard still dominating the space opposite the tv.

Andrew and Katelyn stood up when Riko walked in behind Neil, shooting him confused glances. Neil was about to explain (or try, anyway) when Riko brushed past him and, as they all watched, made his way to the corkboard, eyes hungrily taking in everything on it.

Katelyn turned back to Neil. “Why is he here?” Her tone was annoyed, but not much else. Nor did she have time to elaborate, because Riko began taking things down from the board. Neil scrambled forward to stop him, and Andrew was already there to rip the content of Riko’s hands away, but then Riko began speaking.

“You’ve got half this board wrong. Eaira Rosenfor and Matthew Demearland never met, and Sylvester Daye was already dead by 1508.” He turned to Neil’s and Katelyn’s direction, ignoring Andrew on his other side. “I knew we were supposed to keep you in the dark for as long as we could, but I thought you knew more than _this._ ”

At this point, Neil is just getting tired of it all. “Okay, you need to explain what the fuck is going on. Who are you and what are you doing here?”

Riko gives Neil a pointed look. “You know who I am.”

“I know who your great-great-great grandfather was. Doesn’t tell me jack shit about you.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Katelyn says, making a _time out_ gesture with her hands. “Neil, you explain first. Riba, you’re next.”

Once again, Riko let the jab slide as they all got settled on the couches. Neil closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and let his memories wash over him.

* * *

 

The first snow of the season had come and gone, leaving the entirety of Mount Hakusan covered in a fine sheet of white. Between the blanket of snow covering the earth and the blanket of clouds covering the sky, it was near impossible to tell mountain slope from morning sky.

Elias stared up at the mountain’s peak, even though their destination was a good three hundred meters below it, though still no visible from where they stood at the base. The animals under his heavy sleeves were calm for once, subdued either by the cold weather or what they were about to face. Elias didn’t know which answer he hoped for.

“This trip will take us two days,” Kengo said from beside Elias, addressing the group. There were ten of them: Kengo to guide them, as the head of the local Shinto shrine and, really, the only one here acquainted with the mountain. Three more priests from around the province to offer support in any scholarly manner. Fived hired samurai— old guard, retirees who couldn’t or wouldn’t advance with the times — to provide muscle.

And Elias.

“We will make it to the cave entrance by sundown, but  won’t go in until the next morning. I want us rested for the task ahead, and once we go in, I don’t dare assume we’ll have another chance to sleep.”

Elias only understood most of that, but managed to infer the rest. Returning to a language wasn’t as difficult as picking up a new one, but his fluency was still a good three hundred and fifty years out of date.

He’d only returned out of curiosity. He’d had friends in the region, once upon a time, and had wished to see what had become of them. He wasn’t sure what he’d been hoping for. A noble family of demon hunters? Simple townsfolk who’d never heard his name before? It was impossible to say. What he _had_ found was Kengo, a man in his late forties begging for Neil’s help.

He refused to explain _what_ was up that mountain, but whatever it was, it had devoured every demon in Japan, and it was unknown if it had desire to move on to the next course. And this wasn’t Elias’s brand of _devouring_ either. Whatever this thing was, it made its kill with claws and teeth. And as demons usually disguised themselves as regular people, the surrounding provinces were quick to forge legends of a terrible beast who feasted on human flesh in the night. And so the local governance had funded this expedition to solve the problem. Neil had been a last minute addition, and not even a paid one, but he felt a certain obligation to join. This was his world, and arguably Kengo’s, but the rest of them deserved the innocence of mortality.

As mountains went, Hakusan was far from the tallest, but the way was dangerous enough in summer, and safety in their travel meant that by the time they reached the fold in the rock leading into the cave and conveniently offering small relief from the lazy but freezing winds, the ambient sunlight, fractured into a million sources by the cloud cover, was beginning to fade.

The ground beneath their feet was flat for the most part, and luck meant this side of the mountain had slightly less snow, but frozen fingers and fatigue still made setting up camp a herculean endeavour. But in the end, the ten of them were sitting around a small fire trading jokes and stories. Koide, a woman in her sixties who took up the blade in her husband’s place when she was widowed, had them all rolling on the floor with ridiculous tales and clever voice acting. Elias rarely had plans for the future, but considered how long he could stay in Japan before he had to hunt again; a season or three in company like this sounded like a dream.

Still, the night ended on a somber note, as none could really close their eyes and drift off to sleep without contemplating the unknown dangers of the day ahead.

The next morning brought little light to the outside world and none within the cave, par what little of the darkness they could scrape away by lantern light. The entrance was thin, but soon the tunnel widened, allowing them to enter two at a time. The tunnel curved down slightly, and at a curve, making Elias suspect they were spiraling down into the heart of the mountain. Such a tunnel was unlikely to be natural, and the implications made him shiver.

Elias walked alongside Harada, a priest from Kyoto. He was close to retirement age, and Elias couldn’t help but wonder what he was doing here of all places. But this wasn’t the time to ask — or speak at all, really, with the air so thin — so he kept his peace walked on by the light from Harada’s torch.

They all stopped in their tracks when a violent wind tore down the tunnel suddenly, snuffing out every exposed torch and violently shaking the lanterns and their packs, reducing the sources of light from eight to three. But that wasn’t the concerning part. The wind had blown into their faces, not their backs, and it carried none of its usual bite.

The wind had come from within the mountain, and it had been _hot_.

The group shared a collective look, seeking comfort in consensus, before hesitantly continuing their march downward.

Within less than an hour, hoods started coming off, and jackets began opening not long after. Pretty soon, everyone was sweating underneath their furs. The sudden heat, while a relief from the cold, was still an unwelcome surprise, and a signal to how under-informed they were of their mission. It only got worse as the descended, with those same gusts of hot wind returning every so often, until an agreement was made to leave their heaviest winter clothing behind, with the reasoning that they’d either pick it back up on upon their return, or not at all.  
  
Even so, most of them were half naked by the time the tunnel let out into a massive cavern. The walls were uneven rock, but they were smoothed out, and the space had a circular design that couldn't have possibly happened naturally. In the middle of the cavern, a pit was open in a vertical drop down. Elias didn’t know how far it was to the bottom and had no intention of ever finding out.

As they piled into the cavern, the wind came again, but here it was less _strong wind_ and more _explosion._ It filled the cavern like a shattered dam, and it was several minutes before the air currents calmed down, with nowhere to go but the comparatively small tunnel they were partially blocking. Elias suddenly understood why the stone was so smooth: the force of the air was like the sea wearing away at glass shards, filing down its edges bit by bit.

“What is this?” Elias muttered under his breath. Kengo gave him a sidelong look, as if to say _I was hoping you could tell me_.

Elias huffed, but made no further comment, instead moving forward towards the pit. The smell of sulfur and hot iron hit his nose.

Moving had been the wrong thing to do. Something shook the ground, once, twice, three times to a beat, and Koide yelled behind him, “It’s coming up!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Youuuuuuuuuuuuu motherfucker**  
>  I know  
>  **How fucking dare you**  
>  I'm sorry  
>  **TWO MONTHS YOU'RE GONE**  
>  I'm aware  
>  **AND NOW YOU LEAVE US ON A CLIFFHANGER?**  
>  I was initially able to keep a consistent posting schedule by keeping chapters at 1700 words. This chapter alone is 2k and the sequence isn't even over. Getting a chapter out is good. Getting a _good_ chapter out is better.  
>  **Whatever. Anyway... don't think I'm missing those references.**  
>  Hehe, yeah, those are more than just simple references. Lets see if you can figure them out. Anyway, ya'll know the drill. Kudos, comment, subscribe! [kissy noises]


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rereading the interlude (chapter 9) is recommended.

“What did it look like?” Andrew asks, leaning forward in his seat. Neil had been talking for a good twenty minutes now, the story just reaching its climax. The three of them were in their usual positions, Neil on the armchair and Andrew and Katelyn on the couch.

But their usual dynamic is interrupted by the presence of Riko Moriyama: their boss’s nephew, and — apparently — a co-conspirator of Renee’s and a distant successor of an old friend of Neil’s. To his credit, he looks to be making an effort not to be obtrusive, probably because he already knows this story.

Neil takes a deep breath, eyes searching the floor, trying to think of a description. Eventually, he settles on: “You know those absurd jenga towers people post on the internet, the one standing on a single wood block? Or those towers of beach rocks people make that look like they should’ve fallen down three stones ago?” They nod. “Imagine human genetics is like that. A careful balancing act of genetics tested over millions of years to build something stable.”

Neil raises his eyes to look at his friends. “That thing was what happens when a toddler runs in and knocks it all over.”

* * *

 

The Other One wasn’t that large, all things considered. Maybe twice Kengo’s size? It was impossible to tell, with the way its shape kept changing. It was like a snake molting in fast forward, but with its flesh as well as skin. Muscles grew and bulged, never the same way twice, and then began necrotizing and sloughing off its body to reveal the new growths beneath. Some of it fell back into the pit, and a second later the explosion of air came again. That smell was back, and Elias realized that it wasn’t air, he was breathing in the Other One’s fallen biomass, which exploded from the heat.

“Elias,” a voice shouted into his ear, and he turned to see Koide next to him, hand on the hilt of her blade. “What do we do?”

Elias genuinely has no idea, so he goes with the first thing that comes to mind. “We kill it.”

That’s the only cue anyone else needs to draw their blades and pistols and charge the thing. In response, the Other One’s muscles shift apart, revealing bone fragments. Elias realizes are meant to be teeth only half a second before the creature lets out an unholy screech, the likes of which Elias won’t hear again for a good several decades. It charges at them, its excuse for a mouth yawning open wide, so wide, wider than anything with an actual jawbone should be able to go.

Koide makes it to the Other One first, slashing right under where the ‘mouth’ is and where the throat should reasonably follow. But the damaged flesh simply necrotizes and falls away, leaving unmarred (though not much prettier) skin behind.

The Other One raises one clawed foot and swipes Koide into the pit. 

It happens so fast it takes Elias a full second after the fact to realize what had just happened. A single strike, and someone was dead. Confusion quickly gives way to fury, and he pulls back the hammer on his pistol, taking aim. From the yelling all around him, he’s relieved to understand that the rest of the group has come to similar conclusions.

“Aiming!” Elias shouts as a single warning and fires, aiming right for the eye. He misses, but still hits the Other One. Blood actually gushes forth this time, half-congealed already. A second later, as Neil is reloading, changing his positions with accordance to to the Other One’s rampage around the room, a second shot rings off. Kengo this time, though he misses. They have six pistols between them, and somehow manage to keep a semi-consistent volley of bullets, as Takeshi danced around the creature, throwing knives at whatever he considered a joint.

Still, by the time Elias was sideswiped against the far wall, hitting a wall with a sickening crunch, only four of them are left.

Elias knows that if he were human, the force would’ve crushed his skull and he’d be dead. As it is, he’s too out of breath to do anything beyond watch helplessly as the Other One moves to kill them all. The animals on his skin won’t stop moving, fighting, clawing at each other and at him, pushing, pushing…

What Elias does next doesn’t even count as instinct, as he reaches under his tattered, sweat-soaked undershirt, and 

pulls

at something deep within him, bringing it out. He wasn’t supposed to do that, he knows that the second he does it from the black hole that just opened in his chest, this vast emptiness he doesn’t know how to feed. But he did it anyway, so he may as well follow through. 

The fox explodes out of Elias’ chest, gold and red and furious. It tears away the last shreds of Elias’ undershirt as it charges at the Other One at full speed. Here in the real world, the fox isn’t forced share its space with others like it, and so with every bound it grows bigger, stronger, angrier, losing every sense of moderation its former prison had forced upon it. By the time it finally collides with the Other One, it’s big enough to bisect the creature in a single bite. Which it does. 

The Other One collapses, only three of its original five (or seven?) feet still attached. Elias would’ve said that the body twitched as it dies, but he honestly isn’t sure. The thing’s flesh continues to melt off, but now nothing grows to replace it, and so it shrinks and deforms until a loose collection of bones that Elias is fairly certain don’t fit together remains. 

But all of this is peripheral. The matter of the giant exploding fox is the more blatant concern at the moment. 

“Get away!” Elias shouts, running past his remaining teammates — who all seem to be fine at a cursory glance — back to the tunnel entrance. His three remaining companions are fast on his heels. The tunnel is just beginning to visibly slope when they hear a massive boom, and suddenly a cloud of thick ash envelopes them. Elias claps his hand to his mouth, trying to prevent himself from breathing it in, but trudges forward. 

But Elias no longer has a lantern or a torch, so he walks in the dark, any trace of sound sntached away by the ash. It reeks of sulfur and rotten meat, making Elias want to gag.

Eventually, the all-encompassing heat begins to fade away, and Elias realized he’d probably walked right past all of their winter gear and never noticed. So he stops, collapsing against the wall, breathing shallowly, and waits.

If he had to guess, its over an hour before the ash begins to settle on everything like a thick coat of paint. Within minutes, Elias is the same shade of light gray as the walls and floor. He muses that he probably looks terrifying to an outside observer, like he’d been consumed by the stone, and the thought makes him laugh, shaking up a new cloud of ash around him.

The ash gets into his nose, making him cough, which only stirs up more ash, so Elias decides he may as well stand up and go back to look for his teammates and supplies.

Harada is slumped over barely a foot from the entrance into the cavern, facedown in so much ash Elias’ eyes go right past him at first — and third — glance. He’s very clearly not breathing. Kengo and Hayate, one of the hired swords, are resting further ahead. Hayate’s left arm has a massive gash right below the shoulder. Elias is fairly sure they’ll amputate. Soon they’ll have to go looking for their abandoned equipment, but for now, they catch their breath.

Elias sits down next to Kengo, Hayate falling asleep across from them. Kengo turns to Elias with glazed eyes. “What was that thing.”

“An Other One. I try to stay out of their way most of the time. They usually return the favor.”

Kengo’s eyes widen in alarm. “You mean there’s more of those things?”

Elias makes a noncommittal noise. “More of its kind, yes. But each one is different. Some are dangerous, like that thing. Some are harmless, or have the capacity for harm but don’t care to employ it. Some religions have co-opted their likenesses.” Elias gives Kengo a piercing look. “Do yourself a favor, Kengo. Let it lie.”

Kengo stares at him, silent, but then nods once, eyes lowering, and rests his head back against the rock.

Elias knows he won’t listen.

* * *

 

“No, no he didn’t,” Riko says, resting his elbows on his knees. “When he realized just how much was out there, he started digging. Started traveling. Chasing down rumors, old legends. Anybody who knew anything.”

“What did he find?” Neil asks.

Riko shrugs. “Nothing. But the Woman from Italy found  _ him. _ ”

“Hold up,” Andrew says. “The Woman from Italy died in the early 13th century. How could she meet Kengo in 1858.”

Riko smiles, but without warmth. “The  _ first _ Woman from Italy died in eight hundred years ago, yes. But she knew that you wouldn’t, so she secured herself a successor, a mediator to keep everything from blowing up, and to keep you safe.”

And suddenly the pieces click. “Her successors worked within the Vatican.” That’s who kept breaking Neil out of the Vatican every time he was caught.

“They still do. The current Woman is Renee Walker. She says you’re well acquainted.”

Neil laughs. “You can say that, yes. But I don’t understand what you have to do with it. You mentioned councillors?”

Riko nods. “Everyone has a title. The Woman from Italy is in charge, and when Kengo joined, he became the Thistle Man. There’s also the Faceless Old Woman, the Dragon, and the Librarian. ‘Councillors’ are what we call the religious groups with enough clout to actually do us damage, which is mainly the Vatican.”

Neil begins to nod, but then stops himself, and raises a hand. “Back at the club, you mentioned someone called ‘The Distant Prince.’ And you implied that I know where he is.”

“I did, and you do. At least, I’m fairly certain you do. The Prince was our primary source of information into what you are and how you work, as well as knowledge about the Other Ones. He’d been the reason we’d kept you all in the dark for so long. He was also the one who taught the Church what they knew too, which is really how this whole mess started.”

“Okay, time out,” Katelyn says, making a T with her hands. “You’re telling everything out of order. Start from the beginning. The  _ very _ beginning.”

Riko sighed, but then took in a deep breath, straightened his posture, and began to speak. “In the beginning, there was nothing. And then there was an explosion, and then there was the same nothing—”

“—but now with  _ thing _ scattered all over the damn place,” Neil finishes automatically. He knows these words, he can feel them reverberating in his bones, but he doesn’t understand how. He’d never heard them before. His back itches, two pinpricks of pain between his shoulder blades.

Riko stares at him with a giant grin, blatantly delighted by Neil’s interruption. “So you  _ do _ know this part.”

Neil shakes his head, forehead furrowed in confusion. “No, no I don’t.”

The rebuttal isn’t enough to wipe the smile off Riko’s face, but he keeps going, this time dropping the air of a practiced storyteller from before. “Suddenly, there was existence. And after existence, came sentience. Two species, the Makers and Unmakers — demons and angels.” 

Neil, Andrew and Katelyn stare at each other. They’re primordial gods? That doesn’t sound right. But Riko isn’t finished.

“They were the very forces of the universe, and they were at war. And then, they discovered humanity. None of them knew what to expect from humans, and their curiosity drove them to assuming humans forms and living among us. Th—”

“Hold up,” Andrew interjects. “Sorry, just gotta ask. Was Jesus one of these things? A Maker or Unmaker? Sorry it’s just that question’s gonna eat at me if I don’t ask.”

Riko cocks his head. “I don’t...think so? We’re fairly certain they only came down to earth around eighteen hundred years ago, so they just barely missed the window of plausibility. Sorry.”

“Ah well. Anyway, sorry, continue.”

“Right. So they stayed mostly hidden, but then the Church caught on and—” Riko stops again when a crash sounds from the corner of the room. They all turn to face it and find one of the living room windows half-shattered. Neil stands up to investigate, but a small choking sound makes him whirl back around.

Riko’s side is stained in red. The stain’s center is a couple of inches away from the heart, but most likely pierced a lung on the way. Neil’s eyes widen. “Sniper.” 

He turns to Andrew, but doesn’t find him where he was only a second before. He’d already moved to the kitchen, grabbing his keys. Neil and Katelyn are fast on his heels.

They don’t bother locking the door as they leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey listen I'm in a rush, can you...  
>  **Yeah, sure**  
>  Thanks  
>  **Anytime. Anyway, yeah. That happened. Things are gearing up for the big finale. This is gonna be fun. Don't forget to kudo, comment, and subscribe!**


End file.
